I think it's likely that many former smokers who dislike the idea of vaping by non-smokers are drawing psychological boundaries based on herd identity (i.e., us vs. them thinking), so that non-smokers who vape are invading a mental territory that ex-smokers have reserved for themselves in order to justify their behavior. In effect they're saying, "I vape because it helped me quit smoking. What's your excuse?"
Of course, one can never know, because nearly everybody denies that sort of thinking, because everyone wants to be seen as arriving at reasonable conclusions for sensible reasons.
Personally, I don't feel I a need to justify myself when it comes to vaping, and I think that it's great that you enjoy it, too. It's great fun! Welcome to ECF, all of you -- ex-smokers and never-smokers alike!
Nobody needs to justify themselves for vaping, but WHO and the EU and the FDA and Canada and a whole bunch of other organizations want to take vaping away from us, giving "Non-smokers might start vaping" as their reason. So even if it's none of my business whether someone starts vaping or not, I'm SURE not going to get caught promoting it...it would get cut-and-pasted into an FDA report and used to ban us.
In addition, I think humans have evolved SOME smoke resistance over the last million years (campfires) but the things in vapor, though OK to eat, might or might not be a big surprise to our bodies that, though not as harmful as cigarette smoking, are still non-trivial. The ANTZ folks are scared of nicotine and scared of "looking like smoking" which I think is absolutely ridiculous, but as a former biology major I'm more scared of the novelty of vaping. To me it seems more like Frankenfoods. They might be OK, but they're out of the realm of what we evolved with, so I think we should all think twice. For instance, the fact that it is dehydrating makes me worry about kidneys, but I know my kidneys are fine and my lungs have 40 years damage, so I think that's a good trade. Like over-using new brakes to spare wear-and-tear on the clutch.
So, if someone would have otherwise smoked, IMO vaping is better, and the OP might well have ended up smoking. But people should go into vaping with their eyes open.
To me, the other side of "Leave us alone to make our own adult choices" is to let other adults know the details of those choices and not mislead them into thinking it's no big deal. Then they choose.
But as far as the general attitude of vapers to non-smokers starting to vape, it's not herd mentality, it's stark terror.
If a court ever tells the FDA to leave us the heck alone, I'll relax.
So, OP and others: Welcome to the ECF! But don't tell anybody I said so!
I don't see someone who is not using nic or who has not ever had the hand-to-mouth habit of smoking keeping up vaping long-term, though. There's hassle and money involved that I would think outweigh the novelty of rolling around tasty vapor in your mouth. For suppliers, stick with registered ECF vendors and check out their reviews. There is a list if you scroll down the forum main page; they each have their own sub-forum.
