"I started smoking in my early teens. I used to sell single cigarettes to my friends for 50c or $1."

I started smoking when I was 13 or 14. I was under no peer pressure and I didn't think it was cool as no one else I knew at school did it.

But both of my parents smoked. My father would always buy a new tobacco pouch before finishing his old one, so one day I decided to try it out to see what the fuss was all about.

I gave it a few tries because I coughed and spluttered with my first one and I wanted to understand how someone could get hooked on them. When I had a head rush with my next couple of tries, I finally understood. Then I got hooked.

It was easy to get smokes and I smoked only about half a pack a day. I never bought lunch with my lunch money and I used to sell single cigarettes to my friends for 50c or $1. There was a stage where I was able to get a pack a day due to selling cigarettes and using lunch money.

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Buying them wasn't a problem either. At the start I was getting an older friend to buy them for me even though he was also underage. When he told me he was moving and that I'd need to find someone else, I asked him how he was able to buy smokes.

That was when I learnt about the tobacconist that was well known to him and his friends for selling to under-aged people. I also learnt about the dairies run by people who hardly ever asked for identification. I looked older than I was so tried it out and, voila, I now had a few regular stores to get my cigarettes from. Not once was I denied service.

So, after school, my friends and I would walk to a shop or dairy and I would buy my smokes as well as my friends' packets. When I didn't have any left, I was able to grab some tobacco and roll one out of Dad's last pouch or finish off one of the ones he had left in the ashtray after only having one puff. This was when I was 14.

I first looked at quitting when I was 17. I was a student receiving the student allowance and living at home. After giving dad $50 for board, half of my money went on tobacco. I found it great having more money and wanted more so looked into quitting, but I didn't last two days after trying to go cold turkey.

I looked into the patches and gum through Quitline. I had my last smoke when I filled my prescription and found the fruit-flavoured gum delicious. I had been smokefree for six months until I missed smoking so much I started again. The social aspect helped me get back into it so easily.

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Last year I looked at quitting again and lasted a month with the gum and patches but stress meant I started again pretty easily. I looked into e-cigarettes, but the cost to get started put me off.

At the start of this year I looked into e-cigarettes again as I had just received my course-related costs, but I discovered it was illegal for shops to sell liquid nicotine in New Zealand. So, once again, I was put off and continued to smoke.

Someone pointed me to an overseas site that sells the equipment for a significantly lower price than what they are sold for here in NZ and was also pointed to a site to get nicotine liquids.

When my vape arrived, I quit that day. My current setup cost me $30 - the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a week. I haven't spent any money on vape-related gear or liquids for the last month due to the amount of liquids I have.

I am now 24 years old. I am currently at four months smoke-free and it is all due to vaping.

I think it is a great idea for the government to look at making e-liquids containing nicotine legal to sell.

When I first started vaping, I was stuck using cheap juice from China due to the extreme shipping costs everywhere else. I was unaware of the places in New Zealand that were already selling liquids illegally. Having it more accessible can encourage other smokers to quit as finding out that it was illegal to sell e-liquids containing nicotine had put me off.

Seeing that it can help people quit like my 47-year-old mother who started smoking when she was about 13 makes me believe that we can reach the target of being a smokefree country by 2025.

We just need to put the effort into letting people know that their are other options out there for those who want to quit.

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