It seems there will be no more laughing gas in nightclubs

Grrrrr

Grrrrr

Bluelighter
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The Times
March 6th, 2007

"Purge on ‘lethal’ laughing gas in clubs and bars"

Nightclubs, bars and festivals that sell nitrous oxide face prosecution as part of a purge on the recreational use of the chemical.

Drug regulators said yesterday that anyone supplying the compound, commonly known as laughing gas, for recreational inhalation was complicit in an activity that carried serious health risks and would be prosecuted.

The Medicines and Health-care products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said that the maximum penalty for supplying nitrous oxide in contravention of the Medicines Act was two years’ imprisonment or an unlimited fine.

Use of nitrous oxide has surged in popularity in recent years as a cheap, seemingly harmless and supposedly legal “high”.

However, while its use as a medical anaesthetic and in some food products, such as canisters of whipped cream, is permitted, only pharmacists are legally allowed to supply it in a gas form.

The crackdown by the MHRA follows the death of a 23-year-old company manager in Birmingham.

Although the gas is not toxic, excessive inhalation can cause hypoxia — a lack of oxygen in the brain — which led to the death of Daniel Watts, whose body was found at his home next to a large cylinder of nitrous oxide.

An inquest in January was told that he had asphyxiated himself by excessive inhalation of the drug, which is known as “hippie crack” because of its psychological addictiveness and for the euphoria it induces.

The supply of nitrous oxide for recreational use — where balloons of the colourless, odourless gas are inhaled to give a temporary, dizzying rush — has become increasingly common.

Long-term dangers to health include bone-marrow suppression, blood-cell problems and poisoning of the central nervous system. The risks are likely to be aggravated if the drug is combined with alcohol or other narcotics, and they are particularly severe for pregnant women.

Under current laws, anyone over the age of 18 can buy the gas for culinary purposes — it is present in pressurised canisters. This presents a loophole for people who can modify the canisters so that they can extract and inhale the gas. Possessing and inhaling nitrous oxide remains legal.

A host of venues throughout Britain openly supply the gas, considered a “dinner-party drug” in some circles. Kits comprising a canister and a batch of pellets are also available on the internet for as little as £30.

Martin Barnes, chief executive of the drug charity Drug-Scope, said that inhaling gas directly from canisters was extremely dangerous, because it can freeze both the throat and lungs.

“Laughing gas is by no means a risk-free drug, and when used outside of a controlled medical setting it can be dangerous,” he said.

“Nitrous oxide replaces oxygen in the lungs. If taken in sufficient quantities and at a high enough concentration, it can lead to fatal asphyxiation.”

The Local Authorities Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services have now written to councils recommending that they police nightclubs, festivals and bars that may be supplying nitrous oxide.

Councils that find venues to be in breach of this warning would then report them to the MHRA, and possibly prosecute them.

Mick Deats, head of enforcement and intelligence at the MHRA, said that at least one website selling the gas was being investigated for possible illegal activity.

Two centuries of intoxication

» Nitrous oxide - laughing gas - was discovered by Joseph Priestley, a scientist and clergyman, in 1793

» Humphry Davy tested the gas on himself and his friends, including the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, noting that the gas could alleviate physical pain

» Robert Southey wrote: “I am sure the air in heaven must be this wonderworking gas of delight”

» In the first half of the 19th century people paid to inhale a minute’s worth of gas

» Nitrous oxide can be injected into the fuel of racing cars to give them added acceleration It is also present as a powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere

Source: Times Database

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1475252.ece

EDIT I wasn't sure if this would be more appropriate for UK users to see in here or whether it should be in the DITM section, mods you decide
 
As much as anything else i can't understand why they feel the need to 'crack down' on the sale of nitrous?? All it means is extra expense to the tax player when, despite what this article would have you believe, nitrous is about as safe a drug as you are going to find. Far more damage is being done to the health of people that are drinking in the club than those that have a couple of balloons of nos. It all seems a bit silly
 
Two centuries of intoxication, and one moron to ruin it for everyone. If you're going to take a drug, then do some reading, and don't use it as an oxygen replacement. 8)
 
didn't the bloke die from putting a bag over his head?
This is just stupid.
 
Moved: EADD ---> DITM

I was gonna post this yesterday. To be honest, I'm surprised they got away with it for this long. As I understood the law on nitrous, if the vendor sold the gas knowing that it would be used for getting fucked up, then that was against the law.

Proving it is difficult when dealing with a vendor who sells chargers over the internet, but we've all been to clubs where it's sold behind the nang bar and it's OBVIOUS that it isn't so that clubbers can walk around with a nice balloon attached to their wrist!

Shame... but then it was never going to last.
 
I'm sure peole will try to bend the rules.

The act they're talking about says:

sale of nitrous oxide gas for inhalation is an offence under Section 52 of the Medicines Act 1968 of selling and/or supplying a pharmacy medicine not under the control of a pharmacist
Click to expand...

So they'll prolly sell them as "novelty baloons" and recommend that customers do not inhale them.

Heh
 
As long as it doesn't stop the sale of it on the internet then I'm not really bothered directly as I am too tight to buy it in clubs. It still bothers me that there's a crackdown on anything that's considered recreational though :|
 
They would struggle to ban it's sale completely, as it has a legitimate use in catering. (i've used those dispensers way before I knew how much fun they were WITHOUT the cream!)

And it's not actually illegal to inhale it, just to sell it for inhallation.
 
Just makes it more dangerous when they push it further underground.
 
THat article only applies to the UK, correct? N2O is still legal to buy OTC in the US as of now, isn't it? As far as I could tell, that was a strictly UK bit. Someone please inform me on this.
Thank yas
 
Deathrow558 said:
I've never seen it in a club here anyway. Are they not aloud to sell it in clubs in Scotland?
Click to expand...
I've seen it sold at Fantazia and Coloursfest (Breahead, Scotland)
 
What a load of bollocks!! :X The UK seems to be getting rather hardcore in banning drugs and whatnot. Bit of a shame really. :(
 
pekkie said:
What a load of bollocks!! :X The UK seems to be getting rather hardcore in banning drugs and whatnot. Bit of a shame really. :(
Click to expand...

We're following in good old America's footsteps. We want to be just like them apparantly.
 
From yesterdays Guardian about Nitrous and the plastic bag man.

"Nitrous oxide starves the brain of oxygen? Don't make me laugh"

Obviously nobody is more worried than I about the hippie crack epidemic: nitrous oxide - better known as laughing gas - has hit the news, after the death of a man with a plastic bag over his head, and a canister of the drug connected to himself.

I feel very sorry for this poor man, but equally we must all take responsibility for our actions. Plastic carrier bags are a vital feature of the tramp-chic look I've been going with this season, and to be fair, the one I'm currently carrying my laptop around in reads "plastic bags can be dangerous: to avoid suffocation keep this bag away from babies and children."

Is there anything else to worry about with hippie crack? All drugs carry risks, and it is only by clarifying those risks that we can decide how to manage them. Luckily the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority has put out a press release, which has manifested itself mostly under headlines suggesting nitrous is "no laughing matter".

The MHRA says: "Whilst the inhalation of nitrous oxide may be perceived by some as harmless activity, there are a number of health risks associated with its inhalation. The 'rush' users experience is caused by starving the brain of oxygen. This can cause the user to collapse and injure themselves when falling."

To be effective in public health policy it is generally considered that your message must be credible. I suspect most hippie crack users will already have experimented with holding their breath, and will rightly conclude that their transcendent experience on nitrous is a drug effect; and that it's an anaesthetic used in hospitals, and in childbirth, so the effect is probably not caused by starving the brain of oxygen; and that the MHRA, of all reputable bodies, is talking nonsense.

In fact, the pharmacology of nitrous oxide is fascinating, and a window on to how we deduce what drugs do in the brain. It seems to work on the NMDA neurotransmitter system, and on the opioid system. Animal models suggested that it might increase the release of opiate molecules made by your own body. To test whether opiates were responsible for the effects on humans, researchers gave nitrous to people in pain, and then gave an opiate receptor blocker, to see if the analgesic effect was reversed, or changed: the analgesic effect was, but the subjective sensations of being "high" were not, even at high doses, suggesting that this aspect of its effect must be mediated by a different neurotransmitter system. It seems likely that these effects are mediated by the NMDA system, perhaps similarly to ketamine.

Are there any real dangers with nitrous oxide? Well it's fairly safe overall, and I suppose you could risk manage the "falling over" thing by "sitting down", but it has been studied closely for a long time - on account of its widespread medical use, and the worry about chronic low dose exposure for dentists and people who work in operating theatres - and it turns out that it does have a major side effect: it selectively oxidises the folate, or vitamin B12, in your body. Vitamin B12 is needed for a process called methylation, involved in making DNA among other things, and without it you have a tough time making new cells.

There are cases in the literature of people overexposed to nitrous becoming dangerously B12 deficient, but it seems clear that the effects are reversed simply by giving high dose vitamin B12.

This may be rather trendy and "harm reduction" of me, but if I was going to put out a press release on hippie crack, I would advise against using it, but I wouldn't shoot down my credibility with primary school assertions about its mode of action on the brain. I would state the risks clearly, and if I thought the risks from, perhaps, folate deficiency were significant and worrying, I might also mention the harm reduction strategies available, and start monitoring outcomes. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2030709,00.html
 
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