电子烟危机(1)

The Vaping Crisis

Walker McKnight was just 19 years old when he bought his first e-cigarette. Two months later he was in a hospital fighting for his life 'Vaping Nearly Killed Me'

Walker McKnight had never given much thought to vaping.

In high school the health-conscious athlete-who often spent five hours a day working out-would occasionally take a drag off a friend's e-cigarette, but it wasn't until he started his freshman year at Valencia Community College that the 19-year-old student decided to purchase his first Juul.

"It gave me a really intense, good feeling," says Walker, recalling how a couple of hits helped take the edge off the pressures of school.

"I could feel my whole body throbbing and tingling." Two months later Walker was fighting a desperate battle to stay alive.

He spent nearly four months drifting in and out of consciousness, connected to a respirator in an Orlando hospital, as doctors fought to keep his infected lungs from collapsing and his organs from shutting down.

"I begged my parents to let me die," says Walker, now 20, as he fidgets with the oxygen tube under his nose. "I wouldn't wish this on anybody."

Tragically Walker-who estimates that nearly 90 percent of his friends still vape on a regular basis-is just one of thousands of young people across the nation who have been hospitalized with serious lung illnesses associated with vaping.

"His case is the worst I've seen so far," says Dr. Charles Hunley, critical care specialist at Orlando's Regional Medical Center, where six potentially vaping-related cases have been treated in recent months.