If you go back to the very beginning of E-Cigarettes and see what the purpose of creating them was originally, the manufacturers will tell you that they were totally designed as a substitute for real cigarettes and as a way to allow people to quit their habit, without going cold turkey.

Their reasoning was that if someone was prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for a product such as smoking patches or nicotine gum, they would probably be able to afford an E-Cigarette - which would give the benefits of a similar product, and the possibility of the continued delivery of nicotine to the system, without the need for constant patches or gum packets in the handbag.

But have their claims been accurate, and does E-Cigarette use actually reflect this aim? We set out to find the answers.

E-Cigarettes Used By Past Smokers

As far as E-Cigarette use for a smoking cessation device goes, the industry seems to have done very well at converting people.

In recent statistics released by two of the major E-Cigarette producers in the UK, up to 5% of smokers had considered using an E-Cigarette, and at the exact time of the survey 3% of people had already changed over to the electronic version.

This is a very interesting result, as it shows a number of points:

• Smoking is still extremely popular.
• Very few people have even considered using an E-Cigarette.
• Very few people know that E-Cigarettes exist.

Still though, if you take the overall number of smokers in the UK and the USA, 5% is a lot of people (in number terms) who have converted to the safer method of nicotine distribution.

E-Cigarettes Used By Non-Smokers

Interestingly, an unexpected audience has actually started to use E-Cigarettes on a regular basis, much to the surprise of manufacturers. These are people who have never smoked a real cigarette before, and are simply using the E-Cigarette to facilitate social action and ease.

After all, we all know that smoking is considered to be a social sport, as people pop outside to have a quick smoke - or head on out to have a cigarette at half time during a game.

Hence, E-Cigarettes may now also provide this unlikely audience with a safe and easy way to enhance social behaviour, without the nasty side effects of real tobacco products.