I have too few posts to post this on the thread where it belongs, so I started a new one where I can post. The FDA's report to congress on e-cigs and smokeless tobacco products is coming up and here is the comment I posted.
[Docket No. FDA-2012-N-1148]
tobacco companies have for years been cultivating their tobacco crops to contain higher and higher levels of nicotine. I blame my excessive nicotine addiction over the past 40 years I've been smoking in part on the corporate tobacco farmers.
Over the years I tried many methods that failed: Hypnosis, gum, and patches.
A week before Thanksgiving 2012, I received my e-cig starter kit. That very day was the last day I smoked my final tobacco cigarette. The e-cig is not a cigarette, it is a personal vaporizer and gives off water vapor as a byproduct. It is not smoking and doesn't have the 4,000 or so chemicals that burning tobacco has. I use a 18 mg nicotine formula right now and intend to gradually cut down my nicotine to a level even lower than the lightest tobacco cigarette on the market now has. I use flavored liquids in my e-cig which has helped me not put on weight like I've previously done every time I tried to quit smoking. The e-cig takes care of the hand-to-mouth habit I developed during the past 40 years. The cost of vaping e-cigs is quite reasonable compared to cigarettes. I'm saving enough each month now to afford a new car payment and new clothes, and contributing my share to helping the economy. With the e-cig I maintain the satisfaction of seeing the vapor as I exhale it. It has basically everything I enjoyed in smoking, even more when you consider flavored liquids and cost savings, and I'm so thankful for them for having me give up smoking cigarettes for good at last. I will never go back to burning tobacco again by using my e-cigs. Unless I have definitive proof that low to moderate levels of nicotine, less than 24 mg/ml of nicotine, is more harmful to you than the caffeine in coffee, I see no reason to give up my e-cigs, regulate it or add a government vice tax to it.
[Docket No. FDA-2012-N-1148]
tobacco companies have for years been cultivating their tobacco crops to contain higher and higher levels of nicotine. I blame my excessive nicotine addiction over the past 40 years I've been smoking in part on the corporate tobacco farmers.
Over the years I tried many methods that failed: Hypnosis, gum, and patches.
A week before Thanksgiving 2012, I received my e-cig starter kit. That very day was the last day I smoked my final tobacco cigarette. The e-cig is not a cigarette, it is a personal vaporizer and gives off water vapor as a byproduct. It is not smoking and doesn't have the 4,000 or so chemicals that burning tobacco has. I use a 18 mg nicotine formula right now and intend to gradually cut down my nicotine to a level even lower than the lightest tobacco cigarette on the market now has. I use flavored liquids in my e-cig which has helped me not put on weight like I've previously done every time I tried to quit smoking. The e-cig takes care of the hand-to-mouth habit I developed during the past 40 years. The cost of vaping e-cigs is quite reasonable compared to cigarettes. I'm saving enough each month now to afford a new car payment and new clothes, and contributing my share to helping the economy. With the e-cig I maintain the satisfaction of seeing the vapor as I exhale it. It has basically everything I enjoyed in smoking, even more when you consider flavored liquids and cost savings, and I'm so thankful for them for having me give up smoking cigarettes for good at last. I will never go back to burning tobacco again by using my e-cigs. Unless I have definitive proof that low to moderate levels of nicotine, less than 24 mg/ml of nicotine, is more harmful to you than the caffeine in coffee, I see no reason to give up my e-cigs, regulate it or add a government vice tax to it.