After smoking around 30 tobacco cigarettes a day for more than 30 years, I was well aware that this had already begun to impact my health quite seriously. All my numerous attempts to quit failed within a matter of days and I was becoming quite seriously scared by the obvious negative effects this long-term habit had already had, along with my prospects for the future. I was also plagued with guilt about this but still never managed to either quit or even cut down substantially for any length of time. When I first heard about electronic cigarettes in 2008 from a work colleague of my partner, I was immediately interested in the prospect of a far less harmful method of obtaining nicotine without the need to set light to tobacco and inhale the result in order to consume it. I had briefly attempted using Swedish snus a few years earlier but basically did not get on with it at all, so this had become yet another of my failed attempts to quit. Despite my initial enthusiasm, I undertook considerable research over a period of several weeks prior to purchasing my first e-cig in November of 2008. In common with most people of 50 or so, I was well aware that things are not always as they first appear and scams are hardly a rarity these days. I certainly had no interest in leaping into something which might be just as bad as smoking or maybe even worse. This research was considerably aided by ECF (the first internet forum I ever joined) and led me to think this technology offered considerable potential but also alerted me to the fact that this industry was in it’s infancy. It had also attracted the attention of some individuals I can best describe as get-rich-quick rip-off merchants, so I selected my first kit and suppliers with considerable care. It appeared likely that e-cigs might also offer the prospect of substantially reducing the financial cost of my nicotine habit, which was also very attractive to me.