SUNSET, Utah -- It was Tuesday night when 13-year-old Arianne Anderson decided she wanted to try out her 16-year-old brother’s e-cigarette.
“I just put the battery in and twisted it back on and was getting ready to push the button, and it exploded,” Arianne said.
She immediately ran into her mother’s room, screaming for help.
“I thought I was dreaming. I’d never seen something so horrid,” says Arianne’s mother, Amanda Lee.
Covered in black soot and blood, they called 911.
Luckily, Arianne will heal soon, and there’s an 80 percent chance she won’t need reconstructive surgery.
“The satisfaction of the nicotine, or the many available flavors they offer to make it so enticing to the adolescents, it’s absolutely not worth it,” Lee said.
Aaron Frazier with the Utah Smoke Free Association says the issue here is mainly a lack of education.
“What happened with the young lady is certainly an unfortunate event," he said. "Certainly, electronic cigarette and vapor products can be inherently dangerous for somebody who doesn’t know how to properly use them."
Right now, if you go into a vape shop an employee can explicitly explain the ways to properly install a battery and use an electronic cigarette safely. However, that’s going to be changing when new FDA regulations go into effect August 8.
“One of the fears that we have as an industry is that because of these regulations, we're going to start seeing increasing number of safety concerns from adults,” Frazier said.
The regulations also include banning sales of all types of tobacco products to people younger than 18, requiring photo identification for people under 26, and prohibiting the distribution of free samples.
