I was out at Portland Community College where I teach last Wednesday, and there was a young girl smoking an EVOD at the designated smoking area. They were asking her about it. Most of them were interested, but there was an ex-smoker in the group as well who started telling the girl that she thought vaping was stupid. I jumped in (I'm obnoxious that way) and said that I'd been smoking for 30 years, and that since I started vaping, I hadn't wanted a cigarette since. I said that I got the same throat hit, and the same nicotine, and the juice tasted really good, but that you could get or make your own juice for about 1/10th what a pack of cigarettes cost, and that my sense of smell had come back, and that I wasn't coughing any more. Then, we all talked about how expensive cigarettes were, and one guy was talking about how much of a dent in his budget $150/month was making. Then, I told the ex-smoker that if she was able to quit on her own, that was great! I had a lot of respect for that, and she definitely shouldn't start vaping. But for me, this was MUCH better than smoking, and was definitely not stupid FOR ME.
So, in my opinion, you should be an ambassador to smokers, and provide them with all of the information that they're interested in. You might even convince a few of them to give it a try. For non-smokers, who cares what they think? I'm not vaping for them, I'm vaping for me. If someone wants to be belligerent, it's not my job to change them. And, if someone is invincibly ignorant, then there's no use in wasting your breath talking to them.