After several years in developing her product,  Hazel Harrison of St. John’s is launching the first part of her product to help wean smokers off cigarettes.

Harrison is the CEO of SNM Global Technologies – which stands for Smoke No More. The company has just released its iOS-based app that helps smokers to gradually cut down until they cut out the habit altogether. Later this year, the company will release a device that accompanies the app – an automated cigarette case that releases cigarettes at specific times of the day.

“The app on its own is helping people to quit smoking,” said Harrison in an interview last week. “We have eight people who are now testing it – three in Newfoundland, one in Ontario and four in China. One has quit already.”  She said another three of the testers have reduced their consumption from about 22 cigarettes a day to one.

SNM is obviously tackling a huge problem. The World Health Organization estimates there are more than 1 billion smokers in the world, and about 70 percent of them are trying to quit. The U.S. alone spends about $300 billion on the treatment of smoking related diseases, and it’s estimated the North American market for quit-smoking products in 2016 will be worth about $5 billion.  What’s more, 87 percent of smokers take up the habit again within three months of trying to quit.

What the SNM app does is notify users on their smartphones when they can have a smoke, and it reduces the number as the days go on. It uses algorithms to determine how each smoker should cut back. It is also strategic about when it allows the smoker to light up. For example, if a guy likes a cigarette after dinner, the app won’t tell him to have one until 30 or 60 minutes after dinner. The goal is to break the habits that keep smokers imprisoned in the routine of smoking.

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The device will be about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and the smoker can dispense a number of smokes throughout each day according to the proprietary algorithm. Throughout the day, it will dispense the cigarettes to re-enforce the messages on the app. Harrison estimated the device would be ready in four or five months.

“We’re currently marketing and advertising to make people aware of it,” she said. “We’re trying to meet with people from [Memorial] University who are trying to do quit or doing non-smoking projects.”

She added that she is now in talks with independent bodies, such as universities and mental health groups, to try to have the product tested independently.

One person who is now testing the product is Harrison’s own husband, who has tapered his smoking for 20 cigarettes a day down to one.  She laughed when asked how the atmosphere is in her house with a smoker trying to quit.

“It’s not grumpy,” she said. “I think frustrated is more the word but he’s still sticking with it.”