Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of premature mortality in western countries and it is important for smokers to stop as early as possible. Electronic cigarettes are a popular phenomenon of global proportion. Recent uncontrolled studies, reported that a certain number of smokers have quit using electronic cigarettes. This could hint a role for electronic cigarettes to be used for smoking cessation, and therefore merits further evaluation for this purpose. Besides vaporising nicotine to be inhaled, electronic cigarettes may also provide a coping mechanism for conditioned smoking cues by replacing some of the rituals associated with smoking gestures, and for these reasons cigarette could become a tool – if studied more extensively – in the fight against tobacco-related morbidity and mortality.