Do electronic cigarettes help people quit smoking? Maybe not. A study by the University of Pennsylvania and published by the New England Journal of Medicine shows that electronic cigarettes worked no better than traditional stop-smoking tools in helping people quit smoking. Critics of the study say the study did not rigorously test effectiveness and only compared e-cigarettes to other methods among 6,000 smokers who were offered help to quit. E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that vaporize nicotine. They’ve been sold in the U.S. since 2007 and contain less toxic substances than traditional cigarettes.