It’s been a continuous discussion between my wife and me for years, smoking costs too much, we should quit or at least reduce it, but neither of us could. Health has never concerned us, but the cost of cigarettes became an increasing problem. Any other form of smoke-free alternative was never an option, because 100% of the joy of smoking is the smoke itself, not the ingredients of the smoke, but the exhaling of a cloud, the addiction to nicotine is nothing more than an undesired side effect of smoking. Up to 9 months ago we didn??t even know about e-cigarettes, until a friend showed us one. It was a fairly easy calculation, we don??t know if it will work, but a starter kit including some liquid for a month has cost 1/3 of a month supply of tobacco cigarettes, so if we could use that instead of smoking for more than 10 days, we will save money, that??s worth a try. Personally I loved it from the first puff, tried one single tobacco cigarette 2 days later and wondered how I could have ever liked that, my wife needed about 1 month of combined vaping and smoking (someone has to finish our remaining tobacco cigarettes), before she switched to 100% vaping. Ever since that (8 months now) we both vape 100% and we enjoy it. The starter kits (eGo-C) quickly became too small, very little vapor equals a small dosage of nicotine per puff and requires a very high dosage of nicotine per ml to satisfy the addiction. After a month of struggling between the desire for nicotine and the strong memory of how ugly that last cigarette had tasted 2 days after I had started vaping, I went online, signed up in over a dozen vaping forums all over the world (combined between the two of us my wife and me speak 7 languages), started reading and asking beginner questions. During the next 6 months I learned a lot, especially how to make a coil for a repairable atomizer and mix liquids myself. I learned that some of the cheap chinese stuff is good enough for me, but I also learned where to choose quality, safety aspects of using lithium batteries and most important how to make sure I get purest possible liquids and still reduce the cost of those under 2 cents per ml. This way my hardware became bigger and bigger, today my favorite device is almost 40cm long, 2.5cm in diameter and I absolutely don??t care what others think about it, because I LOVE IT, I enjoy using it, I??m having fun with it, I actually have SEVEN such devices. At the same time, with ever increasing amount of vapor per puff, while consuming more and more liquid, I was able to decrease the level of nicotine per ml more and more. After 2 months I had found my level at 15ml of liquid per day with 3mg/ml nicotine. After 6 months I noticed, the desire for nicotine had become lower. The desire to produce clouds of vapor hasn??t changed at all, but nicotine becomes less and less important. I found it ridiculous to mix less than 3mg/ml, so I started using liquids without nicotine. Today 6 out of my 7 e-cigarettes contain liquids without nicotine, only the 7th still has 3mg/ml which indirectly reduces my average nicotine content to 0.4mg/ml, but I assume that??s only for a short while, I will get rid of the remaining nicotine soon. My wife has fallen a bit behind, but she??s on her way as well, she is up to 6ml per day and down to 9mg/ml. By my estimate she will catch up to zero nicotine within 6 months. Note: Using 20-30ml per day is affordable for us ONLY because while mixing it myself it costs me only about 50 cents per day, otherwise this would exceed the costs of smoking and lead back to the problem we started with. At some time in between all this I learned about the plans our non representing representatives have for the e-cigarettes and I gave it some serious thought. The result is, personally I don??t have to care, by the time those plans become law I don??t need nicotine anymore and while I do it all myself absolutely all bits and pieces of hardware needed as well as all ingredients of the liquids are legally available for multiple other purposes, therefore I will always be able to get what I want. They just can??t ban all food flavors, they can??t declare torches illegal, glass fiber, wire, vegetable glycerin, they would have to ban all hydroponic gardening and declare all frozen food illegal to prevent me from getting it. A black market isn??t even needed, even though I??m sure it will exist. I do feel very sorry for the smokers who haven??t started vaping yet and the younger generation. Once the starter kits become regulated beyond usable, once they aren??t even sufficient to replace smoking for half an hour, once they cost just as much as smoking, there won??t be an attractive reason to switch anymore. Without an attractive reason to switch, there is no learning curve, no increasing pleasure while eliminating the risks of smoking, there will be simple plain smoking tobacco at ever increasing prices to the benefit of the tobacco industry and tax offices. The pharma industry, currently so strongly supporting the idea of restricting e-cigarettes to pharmacies will add another useless product to their shelves and regret what they have done. Millions of smokers will continue to die, only a very small fraction of the current generation (which I??m lucky enough to be part of) will enjoy the pleasure of risk free vaping at near meaningless costs for many years to come.