The U.S has now seen almost two dozen deaths health experts say were related to vaping.

Now there are questions: are these tragedies related to vaping products that have been altered from the originals? 12 News Alex Love spoke to a shop owner and brings us more with this story.

It’s become a popular trend that’s revolutionized how people approach smoking.

“Vaping has helped many people get off smoking,” Owner of Magnolia Vapes Mike Jefcoat told us. “A lot of people think it’s a fad or something. It’s actually a Nicotine harm reduction system.”

But recently the booming industry has been making controversial headlines being linked to 18 deaths and over 1,000 lung injury cases to people who had a history with vaping products.

“When you heat those liquids they change,” Dr. Thomas Payne of UMMC explained. “So they change into compounds we know are toxic to human life. Formaldehyde, acid aldehyde, and Acromion, all of which have well-documented relationships with heart disease.”

But in the latest reports from the FDA, the department states they don’t have enough data finding the main causes of these illnesses in store-bought vapes. But do point to the illegal THC drugs found in marijuana traced in deaths of vape users.

“The stuff that we sell is made in a laboratory,” Jefcoat said. “Most of them are high-quality laboratories. There have been zero deaths by nicotine vaping, it has all fallen up the illegal THC.”

The latest reports from the Center for Disease Control show 578 of their patients who’ve used e-cigarettes, 78% reported using products with the THC drug.

“THC is the psychoactive ingredient that is in Marijuana that gets you high,” Jefcoat said. “And that’s what people are trying to do is get these in a concentrated form and get high.”

“The groups that have been developing the THC based liquids have also been using vitamin E,” Dr. Payne said. “So vitamin E is an oil, when that’s heat and brought into the lungs it might explain some reasonable percentage of the cases that hospitalized individuals.”

With the industry regulated by the FDA licensed vape shops do not contain any of these illegal street drugs and urge everyone to keep the street products out of theirs.