It seems as if there’s help for my friends who smoke.

While some of them have successfully kicked the habit over the years, an equal amount have tried and failed to stop smoking.

Junior Miller is one of the failures. He’s tried the nicotine patches and gum, with no success.

But Junior has read about a device that he hopes will help end his addiction.

I was doing yard work the other evening and he stopped to chat.

“I think I’m going to try one of those new battery-powered cigarettes,” he said.

I’d never heard of such a thing and thought it was a cigarette that lit itself.

Junior went on to say that it’s a device that replicates smoking without burning tobacco.

“This gizmo uses something called a nicotine cartridge and water vapor,” he said. “There’s even a light on the end.”

Junior has struggled with his addiction, and I try to be supportive because, although I’m a nonsmoker, I come from a long line of smokers.

I can honestly say that I never had a cigarette in my mouth. It’s not because I have great will power, but my reluctance goes back to my first experience with tobacco.

It was summer and four buddies and I were sleeping out.

Sleeping out is a rite of passage where teenage boys would camp in the back yard, get no sleep and, after everyone in the neighborhood is asleep, look for mischief, which usually involved raiding gardens or using chalk to write graffiti.

On this particular sleep out, I was about 13 years old and we were playing poker by lantern light in Junior’s dad’s garage.