The best thing voters in Utah could do is elect someone to replace Rep. Ray. There are too many agenda driven politicians in office that can't see the truth and he is one of them. How a man can push for legislation without understanding the issues is beyond me. How little he understands when he states that the paid lobbyists come from the
tobacco industry. The paid lobbyists come from the pharmaceutical industry today in the "wolf in sheep's clothing" form of ?non-profit?"health" association names like ALA, ACS, AHA, CTFK. et al. The once glorious organizations have let money motives drive their politics.
I was a 43 year, 2-3 pack a day smoker until about 20 months ago. I tried every conceivable quit smoking product or behavioral modification program other than Chantix over the years, non-worked. I know I tried at least 2 dozen methods and there probably were more but 43 years is a long time. The longest I ever quit smoking was on Zyban for a period of three months but a funny thing happened along the way. My prescription ran out and then it was slowly, back to cigarettes. A pretty typical story among long term smokers. I gave up trying to quit about 10 years ago after my second attempt at hypnosis.
Then along came the E-Cigarette which my girlfriend talked me into buying. I only got one to appease her. I tried it and found that I liked it. I bought
tobacco flavored liquid, but quickly found I liked the other flavors much more. My cigarette count dropped immediately to about six a day with use of my PV (personal vaporizer, my preferred name for E Cigs).
This worked well for six months, but by then I wanted to quit smoking altogether and the PV wasn't getting me there. That's when I found out about Swedish snus. I had my fears of smokeless
tobacco due to the lies spread by our government over the last three decades, but they were quickly alleviated with a search for the truth on the net. So over a year ago I received my first order of Swedish snus and I haven't smoked since. I was smoking something like 40 grams of tobacco a day before this journey started. Today, I use about 4 grams of snus that satisfies my needs.
Incidentally, much of my favorite snus is flavored also. It's not "candy" and it's not flavored to "indice children". The Utah ban would have made both PVs and snus illegal in Utah. These other new products that have been introduced-Stonewalls, Ariva, Orbs, sticks, et al. are being brought to market to give people alternatives to smoking.
There are benefits to using tobacco products for some people and others just like it much as some people like coffee and caffeinated products. Without the smoke, there is really little difference. What this country ought to be doing is promoting these safer alternatives for those that smoke rather than attempting to ban them. It would be a benefit to the smoker and non-smoker alike.
