No laughing matter: just say no to N2O

The video footage shows a young man in a baseball cap surrounded by friends. They cheer him on as he puts a red balloon into his mouth and inhales. The balloon shrinks, swelling back up as he breathes out. He repeats the motion a dozen times, then picks up another balloon and starts again. His friends giggle around him. Eventually he stops, laughing woozily, his head lolling in his hands. ‘Oh my days,’ he slurs dreamily. A friend chips in: ‘He’s tripping!’

The cause of his euphoria? Laughing gas, or nitrous oxide — aka ‘nos’ or ‘hippy crack’. Videos like this abound on the internet. According to Home Office figures, 7.6 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds in England and Wales — a reported 460,000 — took laughing gas in the past year. Only cannabis was more popular.

Unlike cannabis, however, nitrous oxide is not illegal. The gas has been administered by doctors and dentists to numb pain for decades. Small metal canisters of it are used in the catering industry for powering whipped cream dispensers. Indeed, it’s these canisters that are generally used to fill the balloons from which laughing gas is consumed recreationally. And while it is against the law for anyone to sell nitrous oxide to under-18s if they believe it’s to be inhaled, it has become common for traders to gather outside nightspots touting balloons.

Inhaling the gas provides a short-lived but vivid high, lasting around a minute. ‘It feels like you’re on a different planet,’ says Lucy, a 22-year-old technology worker from Aldgate, who first tried laughing gas two years ago and now regularly uses it on nights out. ‘You experience a rush and dizziness. Sometimes it changes what you see — everything is a bit warped and blurred.’ Sophie, a 25-year-old writer from West London, likens the sensation to being underwater: ‘Your perception of sound is distorted — it’s sort of like white noise. You feel buzzy and like you can’t move properly, and then it passes.’

Balloons are sold for anything between £1 and £5 each, while packs of canisters are widely available online. On Amazon, a box of 100, each containing 8g of nitrous oxide, costs between £28 and £35. Traders advertise their wares on Facebook and Twitter.

Whereas doctors tend to administer it in combination with oxygen — with the nitrous oxide component varying between 50 and 70 per cent — those inhaling gas from canisters and balloons consume it pure. As a result, warns Danny Lee Frost, of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, they may risk suffering oxygen deprivation: ‘Hypoxia can occur, which may lead to loss of blood pressure, fainting and even heart attack.’ In February, Jordan Guise, 21, from Worcestershire, died after taking laughing gas while working as a chef in Béziers. French authorities gave the cause of death as asphyxiation through the use of nitrous oxide. Prolonged exposure — for instance, by attempting to make the high last longer by taking repeated hits — can also result in bone marrow depletion and vitamin B deficiency as the nitrous oxide blocks absorption. This can cause nerve damage, leading to tingling and numbness in the fingers, toes and other extremities.

A further danger is presented by the possibility of buying something more toxic under the misapprehension that it’s laughing gas. This is what happened to Joseph Benett, the 17-year-old son of the Standard’s celebrity photographer Dave Benett, from Golders Green. He died in 2012 after inhaling what he thought was laughing gas at a friend’s house in Radlett.In fact, the canister contained a combination of other chemicals including butane, iso-butane and pentane, used in the production of polystyrene foam. It had been bought in Tel Aviv by a friend during a family holiday and was likely designed to be used in a prank, since when popped it released a foul smell. Benett suffered four cardiac arrests and died at the Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth after spending four weeks in a chemically induced coma. ‘Joe was a lad having a laugh with his mates,’ says his father. ‘He wasn’t a hard-drugs guy. But even if you think laughing gas is harmless, at the end of the day you just don’t know what you’re getting until you take it.’

First synthesised by the philosopher and chemist Joseph Priestley in 1772, nitrous oxide was a popular recreational drug among the upper classes in the 18th century. At so-called ‘laughing-gas parties’, guests could inhale it from a specially designed breathing apparatus. Since then, it has continued to be consumed recreationally in various forms —though it appears to have gone mainstream as a modern party drug, inhaled from balloons, over the past five or so years. Now, on Friday and Saturday evenings, discarded silver canisters litter the streets outside popular bars and clubs. Hackney Council collected 1,200 in one night in Shoreditch last month. So ubiquitous have they become that the artists Gilbert & George used them as inspiration in their latest exhibition, Scapegoating Pictures for London, at the White Cube in Bermondsey.

Paul Coppeard, of the drug and alcohol prevention charity Hope UK, says he visited a primary school in South London where nine- to 11-year-olds were using laughing gas that appeared to have been bought from the local head shop (a store specialising in legal highs and tobacco paraphernalia). And a survey of more than 5,573 students from 21 British universities, conducted by student news site The Tab last spring, found that 45 per cent had tried laughing gas, compared with 68 per cent who had tried cannabis and 29 per cent who had tried cocaine.

Laughing gas is widely available at music festivals. Lucy describes how one trader was selling balloons in a pub garden outside Wireless in Finsbury Park this year; inside, several others were offering them while milling among the festival crowds. A string of celebrities — including Corrie actress Michelle Keegan, England footballer Kyle Walker and TOWIE’s Jessica Wright — have been pictured inhaling what appeared to be laughing gas. Prince Harry was reported to have tried it in 2010.