A very good story out of Fort Wayne where a woman, who has smoked for 30 years, has been able to kick the habit by using an e-cigarette:

Hall smoked Winston Ultra Lights for 30 years. For a while, she tried to cut down on expenses by rolling her own, sitting down for an hour every other night and cranking out two or three packs using a little machine she bought.

Then she tried to quit, but nothing worked – not the patches, the gum or cold turkey. One day, skimming through a free magazine, she saw an ad for electronic smokes.

Hall ordered the kit and, after it arrived, laid it out on the table, looked at it nervously and smoked three regular cigarettes while she pondered whether to even try it. We were, after all, talking about some weird battery-powered doodad that comes with little vials of nicotine, a deadly poison.

But hey, she figured, I smoke cigarettes. What’s the harm in puffing on this?

Two months later, Hall is still puffing away on this gadget that imitates everything a regular cigarette does – a tube that looks just like a cigarette, a light that makes it look like a burning cigarette and a smoke-like cloud that contains nicotine.

Hall’s story is like so many other I have read about and can personally attest to. But that isn’t stopping the government from getting in on it. Here’s an article in today’s Washington Post:

Late last month, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), author of the law that banned smoking on airplanes years ago, sent a letter urging the FDA to take “immediate enforcement action against manufacturers of ‘electronic cigarettes’ and take these products off the market until they are proven safe.” FDA is beginning to get on the case: Although the devices are available online and in scattered retail outlets, the agency says it has halted some imports and is evaluating whether sales require FDA approval.

The FDA hasn’t been able to keep our food safe for the past several years, but they are jumping in to action when it comes to a product that can actually save lives. This needs to stop. If they want to put an end to e-cigs, then they also need to go ahead and ban all forms of nicotine. Of course that won’t happen with the lobbying arm of the tobacco industry.

It all boils down to the holy dollar. The tobacco industry has them, and the e-cig industry doesn’t. So we will continue the public sale of cancer causing sticks, while banning the device that has helped so many break the habit. Hopefully the White House will get involved. The fact we have a President, who is an ex-smoker, might be a plus in our case.

In the mean time, please take a second and sign the petition to keep these life savers on the market.