OK, let's clear away the smoke, the fog, the vapor and everything else about taking up the new habit called “vaping” and see if we can get past the confusion that puzzles “newbies” who might otherwise take it up.
Most people know what smoking a cigarette entails, so it's a good starting point for discussions about vaping. 

The primary difference is that smoking involves burning a dry product – tobacco that is usually treated with chemicals for flavor, burn control and other reasons. Vaping involves turning a liquid into a vapor, which is usually done with a small heating element in a system that often (not always) looks like a cigarette. 



So what do you actually get when you purchase a vaping kit? It comes with a heating element, a mouthpiece, and some vaping juice, which contains flavors and some have nicotine for those who crave nicotine. You fill a reservoir with juice, fit a battery into place for heat and start puffing away.

Why is puffing on vapor healthier than puffing on a cigarette? The basic argument is that tobacco is made up of dozens of chemicals that you inhale into your lungs, while vape juice can be made up of very few – count them on two hands or so. These include flavoring, nicotine and water.

Companies in the modern age are far better equipped, conscious, and knowledgeable about health issues than they were in the past. This has steered vaping companies away from the idea of tossing in a lot of unknown chemicals into their juice to try to improve on something that already works just fine.
Some people switch from smoking to vaping in order to quit smoking. So let's review that important discussion.

There are several nicotine replacement systems on the market for people who want to quit smoking, including gum, lozenges and skin patches. Now, we can add vaping devices to the list.

They all work. It turns out, your brain doesn't care if your inhale nicotine through your lungs or absorb it through the bottom of your feet. Your brain just wants nicotine, one way or another. (Oh, and there's a craving blocking product available by prescription. From first hand experience, I can tell you that works, too.)
So, vaping delivers nicotine into your lungs without the huge cloud of chemicals that also comes along with burning tobacco. How does this help you quit your addiction to nicotine?

It is relatively easy – much easier than gum or lozenges and even easier than skin patches, which you can cut into smaller pieces to reduce nicotine uptake. 

With vape juice, it comes in liquid form in high, medium and low strengths and – here's the kicker – there's a zero-nicotine vaping juice available, as well.

At that point, in other words, you can just inhale water vapor.

All these options gives you the ability to add as little as one drop of water to your vaping juice each day and increasing that amount gradually, weaning yourself from nicotine so slowly that it really is a painless way to quit. I know. This is how I quit smoking for the third and final time about six years ago.

It's very simple. Dilute the strength of the vaping juice until you aren't using nicotine anymore. It's slow, not fast. But you are also giving up the long list of chemicals you inhale using tobacco – worth its weight in gold, right there.

Once concern people may have about vaping is, do vaping companies actually want you to quit?
The answer to that is probably not. They want repeat customers just as any business does. But they like healthy customers better than sick or dead customers. Many vaping companies market their products primarily as a smoking cessation product, so they do want you to quit smoking cigarettes.
If you want to use vaping to quit smoking and use it as a temporary nicotine delivery system, have at it. Then, maybe as a favor, when you actually quit, you could send the vaping sales rep one of your old smoking buddies to replace you as a vaping customer.
Everyone wins: You quit smoking, your friend is lined up to quit smoking and your vaping sales rep knows that he is helping people become healthier and keeping his valuable business going at the same time. Win-win-win. Pass it along.