Hello, my name is Christian Apicella and I am 28 years old. I live in Tucker, Georgia with my wife and two year old daughter, but my wife and I grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. We both went to highschool together and we both smoked. I smoked since I was 15. I have a highly addictive personality. I drank heavily in high school and that lead to doing everything else. By the time I was sixteen I was doing heroin, and within a year I was injecting it. Years later, when I reconnected with my now wife, I stopped doing drugs, got married, bought a house, and then we got pregnant. My wife quit smoking immediately out of sheer will power. I tried to also, but could not. I knew I did not want to smoke anywhere near my wife, or even let her smell it one me. I started going to great lengths to smoke. I started feeling like a criminal and a drug addict again. Before all this, during the eight years I was doing drugs, I have tried to quit so many times that I lost count. I tried Nicorette patches, lozenges, and gum, which did not come close. I knew that I would have to quit cold turkey, because the other things just teased me and made me think about smoking all the time. I think that people do not pay enough attention to the oral fixation of smoking. I am obsessed with flossers, tooth picks, and I have bitten my nails from the time I was an infant. An oral fixation is a large part of smoking. That made me try nicotine inhalers, but the lack of visual smoke drove me to insanity. Did you ever notice that smoking a cigarette on the beach in a strong wind is not as satisfying as smoking in a still room where you can see all the smoke? A smokers mind is addicted to every part of smoking, not just the terrible chemicals that are added to the tobacco. Cigarettes always made me feel so depressed, and I would lose my breath when I smoked, but I still did it. Anyway, I knew I was not going to have my wife and child breath second hand smoke. I tried feverously to quit, over and over. I smoked less and less, but got crazier and crazier. Some time goes by like this and the baby is born. Eventually, my wife and I start full on smoking again. I had always been sneaking cigarettes, which was hard because I am a full time dad, but then everything took off. My wife and I started smoking outside on a regular basis. I forgot to mention, when my wife was not smoking, she constantly talked about wanting a cigarette, even a year after quitting! After two weeks of my wife and I being smokers again, I said enough. I had seen something about e cigarettes and thought this was the answer. I ordered an e cig that mimics the look of a real cigarette. They did not have the battery capacity, or power I wanted. I almost immediately dove into the whole thing. I bought a Provari and a Vivi Nova and finally felt free. Now, I am completely into vaping, it has become a hobby and lifestyle. I have a lot of devices and am always working on new things related to it I have even started LLC with a friend that is currently creating a mod. I feel like a new person. My wife started vaping when I did. She is not into it as a hobby, but she does vape and hasn’t smoked since. She only vapes when at home now, she doesn’t even need anything at work. I haven’t smoked a cigarette in two or more years, and I donƒ??t worry about dying of lung cancer. Since I have quit, I have helped educated several other people quit. The first person I introduced to vaping has, himself, introduced over twenty other people to it! All of these people have quit smoking! It is truly amazing. The people I have helped and the people they have helped, adds up to over 100 in two years, and I am sure those third generation people have helped others! I donƒ??t even know exactly how long I havenƒ??t smoked. I quit the very same day I started vaping. I never looked back, so I donƒ??t know how long it has been. In the past, when I quit on my own, I used to count the days, but not anymore. The tobacco companies put chemicals in cigarettes that make you want to smoke every twenty or thirty minutes. Nicotine itself, has a half-life of about four hours, so you donƒ??t need to vape every half hour, like you want to do with cigarettes. While further testing is needed, there has not been any major health concerns found. Trust me, if the tobacco companies could find something wrong with them, they would have surely been advertising it. The fact that these things are getting banned just shows how disgusting and corrupt some companies and government agencies can be. When I hear of bans, it makes me embarrassed to be a human being. E cigarettes could cut smoking deaths in half, within ten years. E cigarettes are the penicillin of the modern world. These are huge positive impacts that are possible. Millions of lives! Cigarettes are obviously very harmful, so why are those allowed! By that notion, it doesn’t matter what e cigarettes do to you, because real cigarettes are allowed. But it is clearly that e cigarette are at least, greatly reduced harm. Nicotine by itself can actually extend peoples lives. It can help prevent Parkinsonƒ??s and heart diseases. Beyond that though, they have been shown to not cause secondary effects to people around vaping. If vaping was not allowed any place smoking was, then that is fine with me. I donƒ??t mind if I canƒ??t vape in a restaurant and such, but donƒ??t ban it, it is already saving people lives. I saw a news story will the reporter showed a woman a slander video about e cigarettes and the woman threw away her new e cigarette right then and there and went back to smoking. That woman had been smoking pall malls unfiltered fifty years, and managed to quit with an e cig, then the news comes along and tells here they have anti freeze in them. Give me a break, that anti freeze thing is so misunderstood, it is a similar chemical, and it was in such a small trace amount, and from a Chinese company that was shut down. If e cigarettes are outright banned in the US, which I think would be pretty impossible to do, I will start a massive underground e cigarette dealing organization, I swear. They have saved my life. I can watch my daughter grow up. I will still be able to keep up with her. At two packs a day, where would I have been in twenty years?