I started smoking cigarettes when I was about 13, most of my family were smokers, so I picked it up easily. In the summer of 2009, we were traveling on vacation and we stopped at a store/restaurant that had an e-cigarette vending machine, I had never heard of these, new nothing about them, but decided to do some research after I got home. Around the new year, we (my husband and I) were looking to save money, one of our largest expenses were cigarettes, about $400+ per month for both of us. I found an article online about e-cigarettes, I started doing more research, and ended up on the e-cigaretteforum site. After about 2 weeks of asking questions and reading posts on the e-cigarette forum, we ordered our first e-cigarette kits. As we still had a few cartons of cigarettes left when we received our e-cig kits, we finished off those cartons, before completely going smokeless. We found out very quickly that we didn’t like the tobacco flavors of e-cigarettes, and found spicy, minty of fruity flavors we liked much better. We also came to realize that we weren’t addicted to smoking because of the flavor or smell of cigarettes. It was the nicotine and the physical actions. We get both of those using e-cigarettes, without the thousands of other chemicals, without the horrible taste and smell, without the lingering affects of cigarette smoke in the furniture,carpeting,walls or clothing. There is no actual fire, so we aren’t in danger of burning anything down, yet we still get our nicotine, and we still get to put something in our mouth, inhale and see smoke (vapor) blow out. Financially, whereas the initial investment (e-cigarette kits, e-liquid, extra batteries etc. can be high, we estimate we are spending about $360 a year, now, opposed to over $4000 per year on Cigarettes.I can assure anyone,health wise we are much better off, but if the e-cigarette alternative is taken away, or made too expensive, I/we would go back to cigarettes. These are NOT tobacco products and they should not be lumped in with tobacco products, for legislative purposes or taxing purposes. We can also go nicotine free if we so choose, which can not be done with a real cigarette.