A man who vaped for almost a decade has issued an eye-opening warning to others after ending up in hospital.

In recent years, there’s been a noticeable cultural shift with regards to people seeking alternatives to smoking cigarettes. For as long as anyone alive today can remember, cigarettes have been a health scourge on humans as a species, accounting for the loss of hundreds of millions of lives.

When vaping – that is to say the inhalation of nicotine-infused vapour instead of tobacco smoke – was first popularized, it was marketed as a miracle substitute, one that would pave the way for future generations to be rid of all the misery that traditional smoking can promise.

These days it’s understood that vaping isn’t without its own set of risks. While research has showed it be safer than smoking cigarettes – that’s a low bar indeed – it does come with a variety of potential problems, and these are only exacerbated with regular use.

Raymond Dehn, of Buffalo, USA, admitted to having been vaping since he was just 15 years old. He claims a local store used to serve him without checking his ID, and he quickly picked up a habit.

Before long, he was using cannabis THC pens as well, beginning a damaging routine that continued until he was 24.

On September 13, Dehn was vaping in his car after work when he felt a “searing pain”

He explained: “I remember taking a hit on my vape and my THC pen in the car and coughing, which isn’t abnormal. But then this searing pain hit both my shoulder blades and would just not go away.

“I tried to power through, and we started to walk back to the mall, but the pain grew so rapidly. I was holding in screams. About a minute later, while walking in the mall, I passed out.”

He was promptly rushed to hospital via ambulance, where an x-ray discovered that his lung had collapsed.

Dehn said: “I was honestly so shocked. It was so scary to think I suddenly had a broken lung, especially being so young and healthy.”

He added that the doctor ‘wasn’t able to provide a specific cause’ of the collapse, but did reveal that she’d seen ‘three or four young people’ come into the hospital over the past half year with the same issue.

“The only common denominator between all of us was that we vaped,” Dehn explained.

The 24-year-old was released from hospital and has since stopped vaping. Now, he’s urging others to consider doing the same before they encounter issues.

“Every few minutes I get this overwhelming fear it’ll happen again,” Dehn, who spent four nights in hospital with a tube inserted into his body to reinflate his lung, said. The whole experience is sticking with me in a really big way. It’s why I want to advocate so strongly for other young people to be aware.”