Teens Share Their Stories After Vaping Injuries Put Them in the Hospital

Vaping has been under scrutiny for a while now. Though it was at first thought to be a better alternative to normal smoking, now it seems to be causing strange lung diseases, and people are speaking out about the negative effects they experienced.

Teenagers such as Chance Ammirata are taking to social media to post about the issues they’ve encountered because of vaping. Ammirata landed in the hospital after one of his lungs collapsed. His doctor said vaping probably caused his health problems.

He felt it was his responsibility to warn his friends about the dangers of using e-cigarettes, telling Buzzfeed:

“I honestly knew so many more teenagers that were vaping than not, and I was like ‘OK, I need to put this out there.’ I felt obligated to tell my friends, like, ‘guys, this is not good. You guys need to stop.'”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B01BufahqQB/?utm_source=ig_embed

Cara Fraser is another teenager who ended up in a hospital thanks to vaping. Her doctors put her in a medically-induced coma in 2018 for a week because she was unable to breathe by herself. They even told Fraser’s family they should get ready to let her go at one point.

Fraser says:

“Not only was it hard physically it was very hard mentally to go through that. I didn’t want anyone else to go through it.”

She was lucky to survive.

Fabian Castillo is yet another teen who began vaping because he was feeling stressed, only to wind up in the ER. He, too, shared his story on social media:

View this post on Instagram

I realize this is a lot more than what I usually share or post but I wanted to take a moment and show you all what the risks are if you vape or smoke anything THC or vape in general. I was in the hospital for two weeks as I was having trouble breathing, as I got to the hospital my lungs stopped moving all together. The doctors at the hospital had no choice but to put me in coma for 9 days so they can put me on a machine to breathe for me. They warned my mother that things where not looking good for me as my oxygen levels dropped dramatically along with my blood pressure and heart rate. The doctors told my mother to start looking into funeral arrangements. I nearly lost my life for something I thought was completely harmless. I didn’t listen to anyone that told me its dangerous and I never understood why they would tell me that well now I understand why. This is not for sympathy or attention I want all of you to look at this and rethink what you put into your body there are plenty of cases coming out like mine but I was one of the super lucky ones that made it. So please if you smoke vape or anything look at this photo and imagine your loved one or you in this position. This was not comfortable or fun and I’m still recovering so please be cautious of what you put in your body or what you do to your body.#stopvaping #stopsmoking(9 days won’t let me edit)

A post shared by Fabian (@salazar383412) on Aug 29, 2019 at 1:38pm PDT

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are still getting at the bottom of what exactly is causing these issues, though it believes that the primary culprit may be an inhalable version of vitamin E acetate. In the meantime, these courageous teens are speaking out so they can help dissuade their peers from making the same mistakes they did.

What do you think of this social media campaign? Share your ideas with us in the comments.