March 28th, 2013 I quit a 33 year 1.5 pack a day smoking habit with a full pack of smokes sitting on the table… and now.. the rest of the story. I was around 15 when i started smoking cigarettes. As the years went buy and the prices kept climbing I tried at least a dozen times to quit spending 100’s on different attempts, but was unable to do so. Patches, cold turkey even tried the drug Vareniclin that was by far the worse thing i ever did to attempt to quit smoking. Earlier this year, the Blu cigarette TV commercials started showing up on the TV. They are a small pen style E-cigarette. At that point in my life I had concluded that I would never be able to quit. The prices climbing to 8 bucks a pack. I needed to do something. I decided .. ohh what the heck let me try it, maybe I can use it as an alternative or at least reduce the number of cigarettes I do smoke. Well, I went to this little hole in the wall smoke shop that had BLU e-cigs and I purchased a back of smokes for my husband and I and a blu e-cig starter kit. I was amazed with this cause its tech. It actually worked to help quit smoking, unlike the countless other attempts I had tried. While the blu e-cig got me started there where multiple issues with it right out of the gate. My Hubby and I both took one of the e-cigs that came in the starter pack and I was off to the races.. I quickly discovered that the batteries where small and needed to be charged frequently over the day. The cartridges lasted about a day and then you needed to replace it.We only had 2 of them so if it ran dry or the battery died I would smoke normal cigs till I got home. Off to research about e-cigs… There are a tons and tons and did i say tons of e-cig places around. many of them start up businesses with poorly designed and confusing websites, tons and tons of different websites and models and delivery media to use to get your nicotine fix. Its a good bit overwhelming to those that just want a cut and dry answer. There are people trying to make affiliate dollars trying to point you here or there saying these are the best… some of the websites are also virus infected if you are not careful. I stumbled on some forums and started reading and educating myself by what people where saying and using and showing and doing. I upgraded my batteries and got more into the different e-juice flavors and nicotine potency. Educated myself using the knowledge shared by the very active members of those forums. They pointed me to the tried and trusted vendors for liquids and supplies and saved me from the frustration and wasted money of trial and error shopping. To date we have saved over $3000 from not smoking. I know I feel better, I breath better, things taste better and I don’t want to ever go back to smoking cigarettes. I would like people to understand that e-cigs are by far the lesser of the 2 evils. restricting their use after 30 years of trying to get people to stop smoking seems like a ridiculous proposition to me. Research them? Sure. Set production standards for them? absolutely but to interfere with real progress because overzealous blowhards want to ignore the massive step forward they really are by omitting the rest of the facts is really a step backwards in the fight against cigarettes and the thousands of poisons they introduce to the body that e cigs do not.