Smoker of 24 years. Started smoking during my early teen years when a 14 year old could still go to the gas station and Buy mom a couple of packs of cigarettes. The beginning of my smoking career started out due to standard issue peer pressure and parental influence. For Christmas of my 16th year, a carton of Marlboro reds was one of my presents. My smoking career lasted through my twenties with a brief period of cessation around the age of 32 due to an extreme fitness regime I started. It was at this time I started dipping smokeless tobacco, roughly a can a week, a habit which stayed with me until early 2013. The smokeless tobacco was used on top of a pack a day habit which I quickly picked up again after about 1 year of the aforementioned fitness craze. At various times I had used the patch and gums, which would work for roughly one week. Then I would find myself sneaking a cigarette here and there, and then finally just give in and buy a pack. I’ve determined that the problem I had was being around an open pack of cigarettes. That sounds silly, but a closed pack could stay closed, and I could tell myself, I had cigarettes and didn’t need to buy any. As soon as the wrapper came off however, the train began to roll like it had never stopped. Then on the 3rd of February, 2013, I purchased my first electronic cigarette. I wanted to quit badly due to the birth of my now 13 month old daughter. I bought a kit for my wife who at the time did not want to quit. The day I received my kit in the mail was the last time I had a cigarette. I had several packs around the house when I quit, which I subsequently have given away. I have calculated my savings, to be somewhere in the range of 600.00 in the last few months. My wife, who as I said didn’t want to quit at all, used her kit for a day, was unimpressed, but picked it up the next day and like myself, has not had a cigarette since that day. We have also converted my mother, her mother, her aging aunt, and at least 5 of our friends. We decided our new hobby should be as cost efficient as possible, so we began making our own E-Liquid. We now help others out with older serviceable gear and E-liquid if they need it. In particular, my wife’s aunt is not very well off financially, so I regularly send her bottles of liquid to help cut down on the costs associated. Prior to using an e-cig, she was a 5-7 pack a day smoker. She has not had a cigarette since we bought her a kit. Any person who claims that e-cigarettes do not help people quit smoking is either blind, ignorant, or being paid off. Simple as that. My wife is an M.D. with a higher educational background than almost any person who would ever read this. She is a 4th year surgical resident at a large teaching hospital. Her opinion is that they should be giving these products away for free, to anyone who wants one. Hospitals should be embracing these products as essential to their smoking cessation programs, and handing them to known smokers when they walk in the door of the hospital. I read as much possible research on e-cigs as possible. Every new study, report, horrible proposed law. I know the laws of my state concerning e-cig use. I know the TSA regulations. I have MSDS on all the main components of the liquid I make. I have nothing to gain, no profit to be made. The benefit will be when I will be there to watch my now 13 month old daughter get married and have children of her own, instead of dying sometime between her graduating high school and college. I have taken back the last years of a life I had written off as gone.