I started smoking as a teenager. I have only successfully quit smoking one time when I was pregnant 10 years ago. Unfortunately, I started smoking again when my son was a year old. I have called the quit smoking hotline and they sent me patches. I only lasted about 2 days without a cigarette before I would remove the patch to smoke. I have also tried the SNUS products with no real success. I bought an electronic cigarette March 1st of this year and that was the last day I smoked a cigarette. It’s been almost 4 months! I love that they are not harmful to my children and I can safely use it in the house. My husband was also a smoker and had been smoking for almost 20 years. A week after I started using the electronic cigarette he bought one and has quit smoking as well. Neither of us are using any tobacco products at all. My mother and my aunt are also using electronic cigarettes after many years of smoking. Several of our friends, after seeing my husband and me using the electronic cigarettes, ask us were they could buy them and a couple of them have been successful in quitting too. I found the transition from real cigarettes to electronic cigarettes fairly easy and the desire to smoke left me, which has never happened for me before. I started with 24mg of nicotine and now I use 12-16 mg. I plan to continue to lower the mg of nicotine. I know that electronic cigarettes work as a replacement for real tobacco products. I have seen my own friends and family quit smoking with them. While I have been waiting in the electronic cigarette stores, like EcoSmoke in Huntsville, Al, I have talked to others in the store that have not smoked tobacco for a year or more thanks to their electronic cigarettes. I am almost 30 years old and I wanted to quit before I suffer long term damage from smoking. Both of my grandparents had lung cancer and I lost a friend this year to congestive heart failure. A heart transplant may have saved his life but he was not eligible for a transplant because he was a lifelong smoker. I am grateful that I have found a great way to quit smoking and reduce my risk for these and the many other diseases that we know smoking can cause. Thanks, Kendra Homesley Oxford, AL