Hmmmm. What has worked best for me is a cold turkey approach. I am very all or nothing, though.
What if you tried to substitute fruit when you had a sugar craving? Clementines are awesome and will satisfy me.
Alternatively, you could allow yourself a certain amount of sugar per day and track it somehow. You could let yourself have x number of pieces of candy per day, or you could track grams of sugar. That is eye opening when you start really looking at packages.