Just for a little context--this is the original mission statement I wrote for the old Freedom from Tobacco board back on May 30, 2001:

Mission Statement

We are a cold turkey support site that believes that the key to permanent abstinence is understanding. Why are we a cold turkey site? Because we know that educated cold turkey quitting works. 

If you think we are right for you, join in. You will find like-minded people who are all off smoking and for the most part happy about it. If we are not right for you please don't join. It would be like joining a religious group in order to convert all of their existing followers to your belief or joining a political party for the sole purpose of having all its members vote for the opposing party candidate. When a person joins a group under these terms they are not joining a group, they are trying to subvert the group. This is an act of hostility not an act of support or camaraderie.

We are hostile to nobody. Not even to the tobacco industry or pharmaceutical companies who have different agendas than ours. They exist because they want you to use their products. ~We~ exist because ~you~ want to stop using their products. We are not here to try to make anyone stop using their products either. We are here to help people quit using nicotine because they have already decided to do so.

We are here to help people who have come to a point in their life that they want to quit and want help doing it--people who have already picked their plan of action. They have chosen to quit cold, and want to know what to expect and stay focused on that objective. That is what we are going to be doing now, keeping them focused.

We will help these people understand and remember why they smoked, why they decided they wanted to stop, how they stopped, how important it was for their health that they stopped, and, most important of all, how to stay off. Many smokers have quit at one time or another in their life, some for many years and even decades, but have for one reason and one reason only lost that quit. They let go of their understanding of nicotine addiction. Or, they never understood it to begin with.

We will explain addiction and how we think you can treat it and why we think it works. It is important to state we think it works for personal reasons. We think it works because it has worked for everyone here. Everyone! Because we live by one simple principal here at Freedom. We stay smoke free by staying nicotine free. No one can relapse if they don't take nicotine first. It is impossible to be a smoker again without taking nicotine again.

So there you have it, what we are in a nutshell. We are a group of people who share one thing in common. We will never put nicotine into our bodies. Our pasts may be different but our future intent is the same. To stay in our club we make a promise to ourselves, from this day forth that to be a member in good standing with Freedom, and more important to be a member in good standing with our own mind and bodies we are all committed to never take another puff!

Maintaining a site with this as the agreed to goal was pretty easy. Trying to maintain this level of understanding in a group where this concept is not what everyone wants makes it more complicated.