My name is Anatoly Dedkov, I am 64 years old, I am software engineer. I was a smoker since being about 20 years old and smoked for about 42 years not skipping even one day. At recent years I smoked more than pack a day of Marlboro Lights. I never tried to quit smoking as I thought it is completely impossible for me. As a result I never tried any medications for quitting. When I tried electronic cigarettes for the first time (it happened in November 2010, i.e. about 2.5 years ago) I didn’t have any intention to quit at all. It was just a curiosity. Well, the next was simple. I tried e-cigarettes and thought That’s not bad at all. The next day I just forgot to buy cigarettes at the shopping place where I usually bought two or three cartons of cigarettes. So it took just one day to switch from tobacco cigarettes to electronic ones and I never had a cravings to smoke since that day. I think the most wonderful thing about electronic cigarettes is that they work not only for people who desperately want to quit but also for people who don’t want to quit at all, like me. After a week or two my lungs were completely cleaned up, I began to breathe much better, no more morning coughs. So I see that electronic cigarettes are much safer alternative to smoking for me and nobody can change my opinion as this is what I feel by myself. Is it 100% safe? Probably not, but it is one hundred times safer than smoking, it is enough for me. Am I going to quit using e-cigarettes? I don’t know yet. Probably, later. By the way, another good thing about e-cigarettes is that I feel that if I ever would want to quit using e-cigarettes at all, it will be much easier than quitting smoking. And one more thing I’d like to say. This is my personal opinion. I consider e-cigarette is so wonderful device which allows people to quit smoking in such an easy way that Government which concerns about nation’s health should promote it in any possible way instead of trying to ban and restrict it, as we see in a real life. With the proper Government supported promotion and eliminating all restrictions on using e-cigarettes 95% of American smokers could quit easily in just one year. Of course, this will cause some problems as well: – for Government: big loss in cigarettes’ taxes. We always was told that the need in these taxes is to compensate for healthcare expenses caused by smoking-related deceases. But if every smoker switches to e-cigarettes there will be no more smoking-related deceases and consequently no need in extra healthcare expenses and no need in this tax money, right? -for big tobacco and pharmaceutical companies: huge loss of profits. Yes, that’s right. But then we should honestly answer the question: what is more important, nation’s health or protection of profits of big companies? With all my heart I would like to be wrong but for now I see Government agencies answer this question like this: big money is more important than nation’s health.