Dear Mr. Brewer:
I am just today making some progress in answering emails that I have been delinquent in responding to. I apologize for my delay in getting back with you after you took so much time and made such an effort to relate your personal story to me.
By now, you know the result of the vote on the smoking ban. I have seen Mayor Ballard since then, and he has assured me that he still intends to veto the bill.
Sincerely,
Christine Scales
City County Councillor, District 4
Dear Council Member Scales,
I wanted to take a moment of your time to voice my opinions on Proposal 18 initiated by Council member Mansfield. While I do agree with some rules limiting smoking tobacco in this proposal; I do not agree that e-cigarettes or personal vaporizers should be categorized or included as another burning tobacco product.
I was a smoker of more than 35 years prior to November 2010 and tried numerous times to kick this habit. I tried quitting cold-turkey as well as with nicotine gum, lozenges and the patch. Inevitably, I would relapse back to my 1.5 2 pack a day habit within days or weeks because I was not satisfying the behavioral addiction while supplying my body with nicotine. On Nov. 6th 2010, I purchased my first e-cigarette and spent numerous hours researching to find the best and safest suppliers for the various components of this technology. On Nov.29th 2010, I had my last cigarette. E-cigarettes helped me reduce my analog cigarette intake from 30-40 a day down to 2-4 a day within a week and my taste buds actual regenerated within 3 weeks of beginning use of this product. This resulted in my last cigarette tasting as repulsive as I remember my first cigarette being when I was just 14. Within weeks, I had reduced the nicotine content of liquid I use in my device and I do not currently vape any tobacco flavoring at all. My e-cigarette either emits a faint smell of pineapple or cinnamon.
My concern in making e-cigarettes part of the indoor smoking ban is that I will now be required to go outside with the smokers to share along with them all of the negative second-hand smokes aspects of a habit I quit 14 months ago. Additionally while my employer couldnt be happier that I quit smoking and has graciously let myself and about 10 fellow converts vape within our own individual offices, they have said that an indoor smoking ban that includes e-cigarettes would push them to require us to leave the building and in the near future the property to use our personal vaporizers. At every turn it seems that society and governmental bodies want us vapers to continue smoking as it seems that nobody recognizes the benefits of this wonderful technology. The FDA attempted twice to ban this technology and searched long and hard to find anyone who has been harmed since e-cigarettes reached the United States in 2003. They couldnt find anybody that had been impacted in anyway and believe me they tried for months to find even a single person on any continent. That is a testament to a product that likely has a better track record than aspirin. I am trying to curtail my comments to be specific to this particular Proposal but some of the motivation seems to be a matter of banning something that looks bad but has not recorded any victims in all of the time it has been available for sale in the United States. Please dont kick me out into the cold with the rest of the smokers to be vilified and demonized for a behavior that is actually saving my life. Please dont penalize me for trying to be a positive influence with my break from smoking and my switch to e-cigarettes. Please dont let fear be the guiding principal that lets a truly amazing harm reduction alternative be grouped as another form of smoking. Please let the vapers provide an example of a substitute behavior that may make the job of making smoking obsolete a simple task. Thanks you for your time.
