I smoked for 15 years(1-2 PAD), and tried stopping several times. Tried the gum, patch and others but found them very unpleasant, and they did not help me at all. A few times I managed to stop cold turkey, for a month or two at a time, but it never lasted. As breathing got harder over the years, i was starting to think i would never succeed. As much as i hated smokings impact on my health(I didn’t fully realize the smell till later), I loved the habit. During one of the periods where I wasn’t considering quitting (Back in July 2011) I ran across a review of an electronic cigarette on (I think it was) Gizmodo. I thought it seemed like a fun toy/gadget, and ordered a kit. I didn’t know people actually used them to quit smoking at the time, so just thought it was cool that such a tiny machine could generate smoke. After I got it I played around with it allot. It wasn’t until that evening i realized that I hadn’t smoked a cigarette for hours. The first 24 hours or so I figured I’d go have that smoke in a minute, but I just never got around to it. It wasn’t actually until after that period I figured out that I could not smoke cigarettes. So from then on I didn’t smoke at all. I did a lot of internet research and found some more effective products than I had started with. (The refillable kind, instead of the single service pre-filled) Within the first month I visited a friend of mine, and let him try it – We ordered a kit for him that same night and he hasn’t smoked a cigarette since (He had been a PAD smoker for close to 20 years). I had a puff off a cigarette 2-3 times in the first few months, but it did not appeal to me at all any more. My health seemed to return to my pre-smoker state. No longer coughing up stuff, could run again, smell and taste. In my mind, the electronics are in all ways superior to the old fashioned cigarettes. Claiming that they can’t help people stop smoking is baffling to me. Over half of my smoking colleagues have quit smoking and switched to electronics. Doesn’t everyone know at least some smokers who quit with electronics?