Smoking cigarettes has long been proven to cause severe lung damage, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, and lung cancer. Over time, cigarette smoke destroys lung tissue, fills airways with tar, What Happens When You Quit Smoking & Start Vaping Vapourcore It's official. Flavored e cigarettes cause permanent lung damage. And doctors are already seeing it happen. In the United States, a teenager developed something called popcorn lung after secretly vaping for three years. E Cigarette or Vaping Associated Lung Injury New England Journal of Medicine