When Hutchinson talks about vaping—that’s what e-cig users call the practice of smoking with these battery-powered, refillable devices that turn “e-juice” into an aerosol—he’s like a preacher spreading the Gospel. A Gospel that just happens to make him money. He says showing people that vaping could be cleaner and healthier than smoking is his “mission,” and that vapers are like a “band of brothers.” And he believes the surging popularity of e-cigarettes signals the death of the tobacco industry.

“Big Tobacco can’t get involved in the vape world,” he says. “It [would be] almost like Jagermeister sponsoring AA meetings. People want to get away from Big Tobacco.”

Over the past seven years, as the Food and Drug Administration has tried to determine just how good or bad electronic cigarettes are for people, the technology has gone from being largely unknown in the United States to exploding into a $2 billion dollar industry—one that’s still so unregulated, it’s legal for minors to buy them in some states.

“It’s essentially a wild west,” says Brian King, a senior adviser with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health. “And there’s no conclusive scientific evidence yet to prove whether or not e-cigarettes actually aid smokers in quitting.”

But even without that evidence, vapers are devout, crediting vaping with their freedom from traditional cigarettes. For many, this isn’t a hobby; it’s a lifestyle, a brotherhood, a community, a movement fighting for a “right to vape,” and a religion for reformed smokers. Many credit the surge in the vaping lifestyle to social media, where hashtags like “#vapelyfe” and “#chickswhovape” have thousands of posts. On Instagram, you don’t have to go far to find vapers—like a woman who calls herself “PureFantasiaVape”—who credits vaping to saving her life, and calls her followers “family.”

“The people who are in this are almost like born again,” Hutchinson says. “It basically gives everybody a common goal. That’s the thing we all need. United we vape, divided we fall.”

* * *

Herbert Gilbert takes a long drag from what looks like a cigarette. “Show me the fire!” he yells to a crowd at the Save the Vape rally last March in Los Angeles. They cheer back at him.

Back in 1965, Gilbert—then a heavy smoker—filed a patent for a “smokeless non-tobacco cigarette.” An advertisement from the patent office boasted that his “battery-powered ‘cigarette’ uses no tobacco and produces no smoke” and that the invention “also has medical potential.”

You could argue that the timing for Gilbert’s idea couldn’t have been worse: The 1960s were boom years for tobacco advertising—a time when cigarette companies could still get away with ads that boasted that “More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette.” Gilbert’s e-cigarette never went into production, despite his appeals to tobacco companies—which we now know have been researching a healthier alternative to cigarettes since the 1950s.