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Electronic cigarettes are currently being debated at just about every conceivable level in media — including academic, scientific, political, moralistic, and economic. All of these debates tend to be dominated primarily by public health experts, policy makers, and anti-smoking advocates. Meanwhile, occasional mention is made of this or that person who managed to quit smoking through transition to electronic cigarettes.

It’s often easy to read an article and find that most of the information is drudged up from the the usual suspects (the FDA, CDC, and American Cancer Society most commonly) because that’s what’s easy to find. But the landscape portrayed by a look at media coverage of electronic cigarettes only scratches the skin of what’s actually going on.

Often, experts will say that successful quit stories here and there and testimonials don’t qualify as evidence of success. To a degree, they’re right. You can’t take the story of one smoker that managed to quit and say that one thing he or she did must work for others. After all, roughly 9% of people that attempt to quit cold turkey manage to do so. just because one of them managed to do so immediately after seeing Avatar doesn’t make James Cameron a successful smoking cessation aid.

This is why many individuals viewed electronic cigarettes as little more than a fad in the beginning — and some still do. But this view underrates the power of word of mouth. One smoker that never thought he or she would quit and manages to do so will share their story countless times. Many won’t necessarily offer up the story so much as be asked for it. Even if they remain mum on how they did it, the people around them — the ones that see the harms of smoking done to that individual — will see how the transition away from it happened.

Take one common story: Jeff, who smoked around 2 packs a day (sometimes more) for more than 30 years, tried every cessation option on the market burning through thousands for no success, and eventually resigned to an early death at the hands of smoking. Ten years ago, Jeff would have no reason to believe he could quit. But now, a product exists that makes it possible. You can damn well bet that other smokers Jeff knows will tell him about it and he will be telling everyone he knows about it if he manages to quit because of this new product.

Jeff is no where near alone. The entire country is now playing a rapidly diminishing game of 7 degrees of separation where almost everyone is coming to know something that managed to quit smoking using electronic cigarettes. The support of countless communities and even other smokers only makes it a faster travelling message.

It’s this message that has outpaced both science and policy at such a rate that the FDA can’t seem to get its act together. Frankly, it’s not entirely their fault. They’ve never before had to deal with so disruptive and rapidly adopted product before. And no amount of best guess warnings and PSAs about using approved products can beat this word of mouth supporting e-cigs.

This is why the industry continues to grow by more than double each year. It’s just a little difficult to fight the spread of information in the information age.