My name is Stephen and I am a 45 year old male who has smoked cigarettes for approx. 30 years at a rate of 1 1/2 packs a day. I grew up in a household of smokers, mother smoked while pregnant (common back then!) and I often joked that I was dependent when I was born. I watched both of my parents die from cancer directly related to their smoking habits. Knowing I was to end up with the same fate, I tried many things over the years to quick smoking- cold turkey, cutting down, nic gum and the patch. Nothing worked. A couple of years ago, my wife purchased an expensive cigarette shaped e-cigarette for Christmas. I thought it was a pretty cool thing and gave it a shot. For me though, it really did not have what I needed to stop smoking. It was put back on shelf. A year later, my bother-in-law gave me a higher end EGO style e-cigarette for Christmas. It produced a lot more vapor with longer battery life. It was pretty cool, tasted good and satisfied my nicotine cravings, found it to be a handy go-to device for places that didn’t allow smoking. As a result, I took it with me on a cruise vacation where I ended up catching the flu bug. I was stuck in my cabin for a couple of days and restricted to only using my e-cig. Wow, it worked for me! Upon departure from the cruise, I lit up a regular analog cigarette at it tasted HORRIBLE!. At that moment, I never picked up an analog cigarette again and have been vaping ever since. I never planned on stopping smoking at this moment of my transition to e-cigs. E-cigs have changed my life. Within a couple of months I started noticing changes- lungs felt better, skin cleared up and my chronic back pain resided. Loving my new nicotine substitute, I have also became a collector of new & innovative e-cig mods, known as APVs- Advanced Personal Vaporizers. The ability to adjust nicotine, type of vape (hot/cold/thin/thick) and even just the look & feel of the different devices as further increased my commitment to the stopping of smoking and use of e-cigs. If I was limited to that initial small battery cigarette looking device, I would of never made the change. Thank you to everyone in the community involved with e-cigs, the manufacturers (big and small), the retailers (web & brick/mortar), the defenders of vaping freedoms (CASAA), and of course the ever growing community of fellow vapors, who are always available to provide information and support to new vapors, such as myself. Thanks for helping save my life.