I firmly support everything you are trying to do. I don't know how many times I have wished that tobacco sales would be banned. I am 46 years old and a smoker. My parents both smoked when I was a child (they are both 71 now and my father has quit but my mother continues to smoke). My mother smoked when she was pregnant with me and I started smoking when I was 13. So, essentially, I have always been addicted to nicotine (as far as I can see it).

I decided that I would quit when I was 23. I thought it would be easy - you just quit! And I did. First, I got insomnia - day after day I couldn't sleep (I'd never had a sleepless night before that). I started hyperventilating all of the time and then I got bronchial pneumonia and I couldn't eat. I then developed agoraphobia (probably from a combination of not sleeping or eating). I had to quit my job. I had a nervous breakdown and I didn't know what to do or where to turn. I didn't understand what was happening to me. I continued not to smoke. My life had become a total mess.

I understand now that there could have been things to help me do this easier, but at that time they were not as prevalent or I was not so aware that I needed them. I felt so alone. I could have made it but because my withdrawl was so severe, I eventually went back to smoking, and after a much longer time - got my life back together. I knew that smoking cigarettes wasn't going to make it all better but I didn't know how to function without the nicotine. I am still an insomniac 23 years later and must take something to help me sleep - most of the time.

I can't play sports anymore and get winded from a short walk. I have lost a lot of my quality of life because of smoking and will probably lose more if I don't quit soon. One thing I do know is that if tobacco were banned, I would quit smoking! I realize that initially there would be a black market but eventually it would phase out. In place of banning tobacco, there would probably be huge programs set into place that would help the masses quit and there wouldn't be the temptation at every street corner to go back to it. There wouldn't be the people who still smoke (after you, yourself have quit) to watch and envy the look on their faces as they inhale their addictive nicotine (or the smell that you have been long addicted to).

And so I, as a smoker, fully support everything you are doing, but I know you are up against the giants of the tobacco industry who become rich at our expense and have no intention of giving that all away! I don't know if you will make it in my lifetime but I would like to say that for the future, it would be a spectacular thing and would change the face of so many things in our existence. The fact that something so terrible could be legal, proves how this is the most powerful drug on our planet - so powerful that it continues to infiltrate generation after generation. Something, someone or many of us have to find a way to be more powerful than this industry and I applaud you for trying.

Please realize that for the most part - smoking is not a conscious thing and that no one who smokes intentionally wants to take anyone else down with them (so I think killing is a harsh word to use) - they don't even want to take themselves down (it's not intential suicide either). They just don't know how to live without it - and for the smattering of programs and stop smoking aids around, it just isn't enough. So, I am totally for the ban - and the sooner the better!