I began sneaking cigarettes occasionally at around 12 or 13 and started smoking regularly at the age of 16. Most of my friends in high school did NOT smoke and were baffled when I picked it up, but I was steadfast in my belief that it made me look cool and rebellious, and I chain smoked whenever I could, while still keeping my habit a secret at home. At first I could spend days not smoking; it truly seemed like I could take it or leave it. But soon enough, that was not the case. My addiction progressed as addictions do, and eventually I needed hourly doses of nicotine and I smoked close to 2 packs a day. Throughout my later years of high school and on into college, I had a few pretty serious cases of bronchitis, some minor pneumonias, and one particularly nasty bout with tracheitis. I had repeated chest X-Rays and repeated treatments with various antibiotics. At about 18, I began using an albuterol inhaler. I spent a lot of time worrying about my illnesses and knew that I had to quit smoking, but I just couldn’t seem to do it. I was 19 when I quit for 10 days. This would be my longest and, really my only, quit attempt for many years. You see, I was desperately, unapologetically addicted to the nicotine. But it was more than that. I LIKED smoking for many reasons. I liked the hand to mouth movement, the rituals, the social aspect, the image of myself as a smoker, and the physical sensations of inhaling and exhaling dense, heavy smoke. Deep breathing of fresh air would NEVER satisfy that particular aspect. I even enjoyed the taste, at least of some tobacco. Fast forwarding through the next 20 years or so, my breathing became worse in general. I was short of breath a lot and almost ALWAYS wheezing. I mean that literally; my lungs constantly made noises which were often audible to people nearby. I coughed up copious amounts of phlegm in many colors, sometimes even bloody. I had courses of prednisone when sick, and I added the Advair discus to my medications. Any doctor I saw repeatedly advised me to quit smoking. During most of this time, I was a heavy drinker as well, which doesn’t help at all with lung problems; it increases and thickens congestion and expectorate, at least it did for me. I still refused to quit overall, although I sometimes attempted to cut down, which never lasted. Every so often I would consider quitting and pick up a box of patches or gum, but they sat in the medicine cabinet until they expired or I gave them away. My mother was diagnosed with COPD in 2003; I am sure she had had the disease for much longer. As a person who avoided doctors for most of her life, she was not diagnosed until COPD literally almost killed her. Her O2 was so low that she was hallucinating before she was hospitalized. After smoking for 60 years, she quit for good that day. She lived with COPD for 5 more years before she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She went through cancer treatment, but died within about a year (in early 2010) from more COPD complications. Even her cancer doc told me to quit. I still didn’t want to, of course, but I wanted to be able to breathe, and I was finally scared into action instead of paralyzed by my fear. I first tried a cigarette style PV called Peak around this time. I bought it on a whim, and it was novel and cool, but pretty unsatisfying and didn’t help me quit or cut down. Of course, I wasn’t really trying at that point. Later I tried a hit from a friend’s 3 piece pen-style e-cigarette and was impressed enough to buy one, but that fell by the wayside too. Somewhere in this time frame, one of my closest friends was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the lung. She had been smoking 2 packs a day for many years and staunchly refused to give them up, even though she had quit for years before. Well, the cancer diagnosis changed her mind. It took her a little while, but she ended up converting entirely to vaping. Her surgery was successful and she is still vaping today, over a year later. Early in 2012, I felt sick enough to give that one another try. This time was more serious, and I got down to 3 cigarettes a day without even trying too hard. It sort of just happened naturally over the course of a few weeks. This is amazing, as anyone who has tried to quit knows. But I was still not quite there. Enter the EGO 650 mah battery and mega-dual coil cartomizers. WOW! I bought that kit and was able to immediately drop those last 3 daily analogs. During this time, food was tasting better, I was coughing much less, my nose and sinuses were clearer, I could breathe better while walking, and even my doctor said he couldn’t hear anything in my lungs. I was still sneaking an analog here and there every couple of weeks, though. They didn’t taste good and they never even delivered the relief I expected. I usually felt cheated afterwards and thought that I might as well have vaped instead. Unfortunately, I dabbled with the analogs too much and went back to them entirely. But I still smoked fewer cigarettes than I had in the past. Early this year, I had a nasty flu that made smoking very painful. I was down to about 6 smokes a day by that time, but I still had to stop entirely for a few days. I wore a patch for a day or too, then picked up my EGO until I was able to go right back to smoking. Evil, evil habit! Very addicted me! I was very proud of only having 6 or 7 a day, but of course that number started climbing back up slowly. But I am happy to announce that I got back on the bandwagon a few weeks ago, first just supplementing my analogs and then gradually replacing them. I started mostly for financial reasons, but I got back down to 5 a day and then decided to actually apply some willpower. So far I have not had an analog in 2 days! I started researching all the advances that have been made in this technology in just the past year. I picked up a new passthrough battery and some discounted tanks…and I am having that WOW experience again. The tanks deliver a much cleaner flavor than the regular mega DCC’s I was using. They also provide copious vapor, a more natural draw and a decent throat hit. I have 3 tanks and 1 carto going right now, each with a different flavor. So I can change flavors on the fly and I am enjoying that. I know that vaping is an accessible and viable alternative to cigarette smoking; I know that it helps long-term, heavy smokers quit. I know that it is so successful compared to other methods because it is such a good mimic of actually smoking tobacco. Over the last 20 years or so, anti-tobacco lobbyists have been extremely successful at painting tobacco companies as evil. Fair enough, considering what they have admitted to doing. But that image has rubbed off on smokers, too. People think we are bad, or lazy, or stupid. It’s just not true. Most true addiction cannot be curbed by willpower alone; study a little bit about addiction medicine if you don’t believe me. We are just people from all walks of life and we deserve the chance to quit. Electronic cigarettes, or PV’s, can succeed where so many of the other methods fail. Beyond the important issue of helping smokers to quit, nicotine itself is a legal(if regulated)recreational drug. It is about as harmful to the health as caffeine or alcohol in moderation. Even as these substances can cause health problems if misused, they are, for the most part, accepted as suitable for adults. Even marijuana is gaining widespread acceptance as a medical treatment, and in some states it has been decriminalized altogether. The point is that as adult human beings, we should have the right to use nicotine in a responsible manner, just as we have the right to enjoy alcohol as long as it does not infringe on anyone else’s rights. Personal vaporizers allow us to do this. There are a growing number of studies proving that they are hundreds of times less harmful than tobacco cigarettes. Let me expand on that. There are peer-reviewed articles, published in reputable medical journals, which detail these studies. There have been comparisons between the cytotoxicity of cigarette smoke extract compared with exhaled vapor extract in water. Have the studies proven that PV’s are safe? Well, no. But nothing in this world is completely safe. If adults use nicotine in a responsible, enjoyable manner that hurts no one else, what is the harm in that? I argue, None! And if some of them quit smoking along the way, so much the better. Please do not deprive us of a very viable quit method, or of the freedom to use nicotine in a responsible manner.