I'm somewhat an earlyish adopter here. That is, beginning back in 2010 before everything found its way into grocery and convenience stores. That is, before there were physical stores specializing in vaping supplies, back when only a few Internet companies were actually located in the US. The time when users often had to get everything from the source areas of China. (Even though the original concept was created in the US, the recent methods were pioneered in China.)
Certainly, as far as anyone knows, none of this history and experience necessarily means anything, in the sense of how qualified I am to discuss vaping. However, in my defense, I'd say there's enough experience there to be at least somewhat qualified to offer some information and opinion on the subject. Information derived at least partially from those experiences and other experiences like them. Thus I have at least some first-hand idea of what I'm writing about.
At the simplest, vaping is just inhaling some sort of atomized/vaporized/heated material or liquid. In our sense of vaping, vaporizing a particular liquid mix. There is a heater (a coil made of resistive wire that electrically is put through) and a carrier liquid that is flavored and that much of the time also contains nicotine. The entire device doing the heating is often called an electronic cigarette. Many times it is not electronic (just electrical) and is not a cigarette (because nobody is lighting dried vegetable matter on fire). Yes, if the process is controlled by circuitry other than just the heater that's pretty much electronic, and often the device itself on purpose resembles a cigarette, and performs much the same function. An airplane is still not a bird. Either way though, quibbling about these recently invented terms of e-this and e-that (terms that are perhaps not quite always correct) might not be quibbling worth carrying out. So we'll just point out that the terms might not be exactly explanatorily descriptive per definition specifically.
One might believe that as somebody who'd been vaping for a number of years, I'd be claiming that vaping is factually all sorts of things compared to smoking. Proven to be not as inconvenient and damaging to self and others, less expensive, and safer. Not at all. I'm saying maybe yes, sometimes. True, in some cases with certain qualifiers. Depending.
Anyone telling you that vaping is cheaper, better, faster, smarter, safer, healthier? Either they don't vape and don't know, or they're just making things up. Yet the same goes for anyone telling you that vaping is more expensive, worse, slower, dumber, more dangerous, unhealthy. By and large, none of these things are facts and you should be wary of anyone suggesting they are.
