Non-smoker here, too.
I did have a girlfriend who smoked though only moderately, and yes at times it was like kissing an ash-tray, but luckily that was unusual.
I had one cigarette when I was about 19, did not like the bitter taste, could not see the point; have not smoked since.
Years later my Dad quietly admitted he wished he'd never started, but I think he caught the habit from his own Dad; and they were of an era when perhaps far more men smoked than did not. Youths and young men apparently thought smoking somehow "manly", encouraged by the baccy companies' advertising.
Nowadays it seems the other way round, with far fewer non-smokers than smokers, at least of tobacco.
I don't know how nicotine-vapour smoking compares but these products can be far more addictive by having a higher concentration of the compound, and none of the loss represented by the cigarette continuing to burn even when not held in the mouth.