Kailani Burton bought a vaping kit for her teenage son Austin, hoping he would use it to quit smoking.

In March of last year, she and her husband were sitting in the living room when they heard a loud pop.

Austin raced in, holding his bloodied jaw. An e-cigarette had exploded in his mouth.

“He was bleeding really bad,” Ms. Burton said in an interview. “It looked like a hole in his chin.”

Ms. Burton and her family rushed Austin, then 17 and still in high school, to the hospital in Ely, Nev., a remote mountain town. But realizing quickly that he needed treatment at a trauma center, they then drove the 200-mile, mountainous trek from eastern Nevada to Salt Lake City, arriving about 1:30 a.m.