For 39 years, I was a slave to smoking. Iƒ??d assumed I would be a smoker for life until something wonderful happened as I discovered Vaping. It has absolutely saved my life. Now the FDA says I am a smoker again, and if they have their way, I will die much sooner than I should! Let me share my story with you: I started smoking cigarettes in 1975 at the age of 8. Back then everyone smoked, and it was nothing for a child to walk into a store and buy cigarettes. I am thankful that has changed now, but unfortunately back then it started myself and countless others on a lifelong road of destruction. Now of course at that age I didn’t smoke all the time, but the time I did smoke gradually grew as my addiction became stronger. By the time I was 12, I was completely hooked and smoking a pack a day. At age 17, I had switched from lights to full flavor and I was up to 2 packs a day. Sadly, as I became an adult my addiction to these things was so strong that nothing or no one could stand between me and my cigarettes! In the late 80’s I had my first child and went on to have two more, all the while smoking. As my children got older, I began to worry that they might pick up this same disgusting habit that I had hated for years. I decided it was time to quit. So some 20 years after I picked up my 1st cigarette, I laid them down. I canƒ??t even explain how horrible it was, I knew it wasnƒ??t going to work. Smoking still had a chokehold on me. A few years later, I talked to my doctor and he suggested the patch. He told me it would give me the nicotine I need and will help me quit for good. What they actually did was make me vomit when I would first apply them, because the overabundance of nicotine that was entering my system. By the end of the day, Iƒ??d turn into some horrible monster searching for my fix. Once again, Iƒ??d put my hopes into a dead end. At this point, I gave in and figured that if cigarettes hadnƒ??t killed me yet, whatƒ??s the point? Over the next few years I tried nicotine gum and Wellbutrin, yet still nothing would help. In the back of my mind, I always knew there had to be something out there that would work. All the while hating myself for being so weak, letting this little object have so much control over my life. Fast forward to September 2014, and almost overnight my health started fading. I suddenly became so sick that I couldn’t walk up the stairs in my house to go to the bathroom without stopping on the landing to catch my breath, and by the time I was at the top of the stairs I could barely breathe. Although I tried, I couldn’t control my bladder and wait all day before having to climb those stairs. So I made an appointment with my doctor and the testing began. I won’t go into detail, but it took almost 3 months before I had any answers. In December that year, a pulmonologist ordered some tests, and the results horrified me. He said I had advanced COPD and I would now have to sleep wearing oxygen tubing and start on a medication that was outrageously expensive at $600 a month. Who can afford that? He said my lungs were so bad that I qualified for disability, and that if I didnƒ??t stop smoking I would die. So I asked him what about this Chantix, and I am so thankful that he told me NO. He said it was a dangerous drug, and he would not prescribe it for his patients. So I went home with my new medication and just sat and cried. I had no idea at that point how we would pay for this, and at the same time I knew I didn’t want to die young. After all, at this time, Iƒ??m only 47. I am a wife, mother, grandmother, and caretaker to my MILƒ?? I have way too much to live for. Soon after all this, my youngest son (the only smoker of my 3 children) comes to me and says, Mom you need to try vaping, and I will do it with you. I thought about it, and honestly didn’t think it would work. I had tried a cigalike years before called a Green Cig and had no success with it. My son was persistent and said they have changed a lot since then, and told me to do some online research. So, I started looking and at about the same time, a Vape Shop opened up in our small town. At the end of December, we went to the shop and bought a couple of starter kits. It took me a few weeks to put the cigarettes down completely, and I went through withdrawals coming off of the other 6,999 chemicals in cigarettes, but with my sons help and families support, I was cigarette free on January 25, 2015! As I write this, I have been off of the cigarettes for 15 months! My health has improved more than I could have ever imagined. I am off of oxygen, and all medications related to my COPD, and I have dropped my nicotine level from 24mg to 3mg! My pulmonologist says if he hadn’t seen my test results before he would never have believed I was so sick. He even recommends vaping to his other patients that smoke now! Yet, I can’t be happy about all of this or celebrate my success anymore, because now our government and the FDA are passing a law that will wipe the vaping industry out! One of the scariest parts of this is that although vaping has helped over 9,000,000 smokers quit, there are still millions of people still smoking that haven’t tried it yet, and may never have the chance. Under these laws, Big Tobacco will be the only ones with any vaping products on the market, and the little cigalikes that they have are not even subject to the same rules! If you are a vaper, a smoker, or have a family member that is eitherƒ?? please do your research and learn the truth about vaping!