Smoking is a major public health risk especially for pregnant women and their offspring. Harming effects have been observed in many physical and psychologic regards. German health care system and health promoting authorities do not offer specific treatment programs so far. Many countries have established effective initiatives to offer pecuniary or non-pecuniray vouchers to pregnant women in order to motivate them to quit smoking. The aim of this study was to analyze effects of financial benefits to stop smoking during pregnancy in different urban settings. It was relatively easy to build cooperations to counselling units and find financial partners to support this pilot study in Germany. Pregnant smokers were offered an amount of 25,-€ weekly for staying CO-validated abstinent from week 16 onwards. Our results show current obstacles to stop smoking during pregnancy based on case studies. Main reasons to drop out were smoking partners, relapse, private and occupational stress as well as being convinced smoking is not a health risk. Despite advertising campaigns and media coverage as well as primary care etc. recruiting activities remained frustrating. Pandemic restrictions made personal contact with counselling personal difficult. Tobacco control policies are still very weak in Germany which may also have a negative impact on our trial.