Australia is debating next moves as the US announced a ban on flavoured vape pens in the midst of a health crisis.

A teenager who warns that vaping left him with the lungs of a “70-year-old” is suing a leading e-cigarette maker.

Adam Hergenreder, 18, from Illinois, US, accused Juul of deliberately marketing to young people and sending the message that vaping is cool, The Sun reported.

Adam who started using e-cigarettes when he was 16, recently shared a shocking video of him “randomly convulsing” where he said it felt like he was “having a stroke”.

Lawyers filed a lawsuit in Lake County Circuit Court on behalf of the teen who was hospitalised at the end of August for about a week after complaining of nausea and laboured breathing.

The 85-page suit alleged that Juul Labs conveyed in advertisements and through social media campaigns that kids could boost their social status by vaping.

It also claimed Juul never fully disclosed that their products contained dangerous chemicals.

His lawyer, Antonio Romanucci, said: “To put it mildly, Adam didn’t stand a chance to avoid getting hooked on these toxic timebombs.”

VOMITING

Adam says he started to feel unwell last month but dismissed it as stomach flu.

After three days of uncontrollable shivering and vomiting, his mum Polly took him to hospital in Illinois where he was put in intensive care.

Initially doctors didn’t connect his symptoms with vaping and he was given anti-nausea medication, but the vomiting didn’t stop.

They then carried out a CT scan of his stomach and noticed something unusual about the lower part of his lungs so decided to do an X-ray.

Adam told CNN: “That’s when they saw the full damage.”

NEARLY DIED

Doctors said if his mum hadn’t brought him into hospital within the next two or three days he could have died.

She sat by his side for the next six days in hospital where he was connected to IVs and oxygen.

A disturbing video of him lying in his bed on the ward hooked up to tubes shows his body convulsing as he struggles to breathe.

Dr Stephen Amesbury, a pulmonologist and critical care physician at Advocate Condell Medical Centre in Illinois, told the broadcaster: “If his mum had not brought him to the hospital within the next two to three days, his breathing could have worsened to the point that he could have died if he didn’t seek medical care.

“It was severe lung disease, especially for a young person. He was short of breath, he was breathing heavily.

“It was very concerning that he would have significant lung damage and possibly some residual changes after he heals from this.”

TEEN’S FLAVOURED VAPING WARNING

Adam, who has since been discharged from hospital but is still recovering, is urging people not to vape.

He said: “I don’t want to see anybody in my situation. I don’t want to see anybody in the hospital for as long as I was.”

The teen admits he took up the habit to “fit in”, adding that “everyone else was doing it”.

Adam said: “It didn’t taste like a cigarette. It tasted good.”

He said the flavours appealed to him, especially mango, and the nicotine provided a buzz.

“He would wake up in the morning and would puff on that Juul and then cough,” said mum Polly.

“He would hit it several times throughout the day. My son was going through a pod-and-a-half every other day or a day-and-a-half.”

Eventually, Adam went from vaping over-the-counter e-liquids to vaping THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana.

But soon after that he started to feel unwell and eventually ended up in hospital.

Adam said: “If I had known what it was doing to my body, I would have never even touched it, but I didn’t know. I wasn’t educated.”

JUUL RESPONDS

San Francisco-based Juul said in a statement that it’s “never marketed to youth” and had ongoing campaigns to combat underage use.

It added that its products were meant to help adult smokers wean themselves off traditional paper-and-tobacco cigarettes, which Juul called “the deadliest legal consumer product known to man”.

Among the precautions Juul said it had taken to ensure young people weren’t drawn to its e-cigarettes was to close Juul’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

The firm said it had also deployed technology that restricted a sale until someone’s age was verified.

His warning comes after another teenager, Maddie Nelson, 18, from Nephi, in the US state of Utah, was also hospitalised.

She had been vaping every day for three years when she was taken to hospital in late July with a high fever, breathing difficulties and intense kidney pain.

Doctors found she had acute eosinophilic pneumonia — a rare disease caused by a build-up of white blood cells in the lungs in response to inflammation.

Maddie and her siblings, who started a GoFundMe page to help with their sister’s medical costs, are warning teens of the consequences of vaping.

“Maddie’s generation and those after her are the guinea pigs of the popularising of the ‘vape life’, and after only a few years we are seeing some pretty scary side effects,” the siblings posted on the GoFundMe page. “Next time you reach for your juul and feel good about not smoking, think again.”

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission