John R. Polito served in the U.S. Navy Submarine Service from 1973 to 1982. Home-ported in Charleston, SC and operating out of Holy Loch, Scotland, he made seven FBM submarine cold war patrols between 1975 and 1978 while serving aboard the USS Von Steuben, SSBN 632 (Gold), where he was awarded four individual citations.

In 1978 he attended Naval Instructor Training in Virginia where he graduated with honors and was assigned to FBM Poseidon and Trident missile systems officer and enlisted instructor duty. Aside from his teaching assignments, he assisted in piloting two new 26 week Trident missile training courses and was awarded the designation of United States Navy Master Training Specialist.

He earned a B.S. from the University of the State of New York at Albany in 1982 and his J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1985 where he graduated Wig & Robe. In 1988 and 1989 he taught as an adjunct professor in the political science department at the Baptist College, now known as Charleston Southern University.

A thirty-year nicotine smoker, John had engaged in roughly a dozen significant dependency recovery attempts and failed at each. In May 1999 his daily nicotine intake had been at roughly 60 mg per day (three packs) for five years. His health was rapidly decaying with an audible wheeze on every breath, chronic bronchitis, recurrent pneumonia, deterriorating vision and a half dozen root canals. It was only after giving up all hope of ever quitting that his mind was able to let go of mountains of denial and he at last became free to look around without fear. His now open eyes would soon stumble upon an entire world of online support and cessation information resources. On May 15, 1999, with the help of online peer support, John reclaimed his life.

On July 15, 1999 he founded WhyQuit.com, a quit smoking motivational site directed at both teens and entrenched smokers, where he hoped stories of young tobacco victims would help dispel the myth that tobacco only harms old smokers. Soon the e-mail questions began to arrive and John found himself digging for resources to share.

WhyQuit's annual growth has been tremendous. It received 2.1 million hits in 2001, 5 million in 2002 and 7.7 million in 2003. During the 27 month period from October 2006 to January 2009 WhyQuit recorded 61.4 million hits. Today a U.S. Google search of stop + smoking returns 8.8 million results which rank WhyQuit 2nd, while a search of quit + smoking yields 7.9 million results which rank WhyQuit 3rd.

On September 8, 1999, John, along with Joanne Diehl, co-founded "Freedom from Tobacco" an MSN message board quit smoking support forum. Studying under the expert guidance of Joel Spitzer of Chicago, who has been working professionally in the field of nicotine dependency prevention and cessation since 1972, Freedom quickly evolved into a premier knowledge-based online cessation forum. On January 18, 2009 Freedom moved from MSN to Yuku and changed its name to "Freedom from Nicotine." Freedom offers a combination of education, skills development, counseling, serious and intensely focused group support, and long-term reinforcement follow-up.

In April 2001, John commenced presenting "Freedom from Nicotine" a six session cessation program spanning two weeks that closely mirrored the format and content of Joel Spitzer's highly successful Chicago based clinic program. He also started presenting single session seminars and speaking on nicotine dependency and recovery whenever possible. John presented bi-monthly free seminars at the College of Charleston from 2003 until 2006. During 2007-2008 he presented 63 nicotine cessation seminars inside 28 South Carolina prisons. On January 1, 2009 John released a free PDF book entitled "Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home."

Since 1999 John's work in youth prevention and tobacco control have grown with each passing year. He sees the nicotine battle-fronts as being four-fold and remains actively engaged in each area: (1) attempting to motivate those dependent upon nicotine to open their minds to the possibility that they may have totally missed the most effective quitting method of all - education, understanding, new skills and support; (2) motivating government to see and treat nicotine dependency on a par with other chemical addictions; (3) youth dependency prevention programs that teach youth the truth about just how amazingly captivating nicotine is, while countering false and deceptive industry advertising proclaiming that smokers smoke for every reason except the truth - because they must, because a rising tide of anxieties begin to hurt when they don't; and (4) challenging the pharmaceutical industry to be forthright about the extremely dismal odds of quitting and staying free by use of a continually expanding product line of highly touted magic cures, and to at last admit that it is impossible to blind nicotine addicts with a quitting history as to the onset of full-blown withdrawal, or withdrawal syndrome reduction within the active group, that none of more than 200 placebo controlled clinical trials were blind, and that they have no basis or foundation whatsoever in science.