Hello, my name is Bill and I have smoked for 31 years. I started at 9 years old, hanging out with the older pre-teens in my neighborhood. This is before many of the tobacco controls were in place and a story such as, my mom wanted me to buy her a pack, was generally accepted at the convenience stores. I have wanted and have tried to quit smoking for ten years. Now, I finally have, and only through the use of nicotine vapor. I have tried so many mainstream smoking cessation products, to no avail. I’ve tried the gum, the patch, two types of anti-depressants which actually caused depression, Chantix which made me slow and confused in pressure situations and lastly hypnosis. None of these has had more than a very temporary outcome, the longest being three-weeks of constant cravings. Recently, I tried using one of the disposable e-cigarettes. The flavor was anemic and I never felt satisfied. Two months ago, I noticed that my local discount tobacco shop had started carrying a different type of e-cig. It didn’t look like a cigarette at all. It was rechargeable with two batteries that would last approximately seven hours each. It was refillable with many options for flavor and nicotine strength and it was upgradeable. Since my girlfriend and I were just about to paint the inside of the house, it seemed a good time to give this system a try. Over the first week, both of us would smoke an analogue here and there. The first three days I found myself smoking three analogues a day. Then it was two, then none at all and I was smoke free in a week! I no longer want a cigarette! That was eight-weeks ago. I love my e-cig. I’ve upgraded everything, better batteries, better delivery systems and better e-liquid or juice. I’ve joined an online community of vapers and have learned so much about hardware, making my own juice, and the legal battles that we are currently and about to face. I feel like a free man after years of enslavement to my smoking addiction. I’m more productive, as when one lights a cigarette, they’re in it til it’s done, usually five to ten minutes. I take one or two puffs on my e-cig and I’m good to go in ten seconds. My house, my car, my clothes, my hair and my breath no longer stink from the aromatic hydrocarbons spewing forth from both ends of that cigarette. For the first time in twenty years I can actually see my tongue. It was been perpetually coated with the nasty yellowish film from cigarette tar. My breathing is much easier without the noxious chemicals coating my lungs. My heart-rate is much more under control. I don’t get winded after mere moments of strenuous activity, giving me more stamina than I can remember, in everything I do. I can keep up with my two baby boys as we run around the yard… I could go on for paragraphs about how much better my life is becoming since I traded those nasty analogues for my e-cigarette. I’ve already started reducing my nicotine levels by using lower nicotine juice. The nicotine is the last hold-over from my prior addiction. I am getting considerably less of it than from cigarettes, but I still crave it. I have much better ability to control it now, though. I still get that hand-to-mouth action, mimicking the most intensely addictive property of the smoking habit, from a long-term smoker’s point of view. It is the reason so many cold-turkey and gum/patch quitters gain weight after quitting. They substitute eating for smoking. I don’t have that issue with vaping. I am healthier, happier and more productive than I have been in years. Unfortunately I am also afraid. I see legislation on the ballot in New York that will close down the brick and mortar e-cigarette stores. Vaping has been banned in public places in New Jersey, though there is no second-hand smoke from vaping. There is the threat of federal regulations that would make it nearly impossible for me to get my e-liquid and hardware. I am consciously trying to make vaping a way of life as I had unwittingly done with smoking, so many years ago. I am afraid that through ignorance, the one thing that has ever worked for me, to eliminate cigarettes, may be lost to me. I’m mostly afraid that, if that happens, I’ll regress to the two pack-a-day smoker that I was before.