The War Against Laughing Gas
Britain’s Conservative Party has begun policing the popular party drug.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2023
Rise early enough on the weekend and stroll the street, any street, throughout much of the UK, and you will pick through piles of Subway wrappers, spilt kebabs, smashed vapes and broken stilettos — detritus from the night before. The particular breakdown of litter says much about the neighborhood: summer in London’s Royal Parks, for example, means bins overflowing with bottles of Prosecco and Marks & Spencer salad boxes; on Brighton beach, fish and chips are interspersed with lost flip-flops and abandoned swimwear. But wherever you are — Edinburgh, Bristol, beach, park, bus stop, cul-de-sac — you will encounter one thing: the little silver canisters that contain nitrous oxide, N2O or “NOS,” better known as laughing gas.
The gas, which delivers an instant euphoric high and, particularly when mixed with other drugs, a mild trip, has long been a staple of British party culture. But its popularity has surged over the past two decades. At closing time outside clubs and venues, young men armed with portable card readers and clinking rucksacks make fast money cracking the gas into balloons for passersby. It’s available at raves, common at house parties, and the whoosh of dispensers is a familiar part of the soundscape at festivals, where it is usually sold by an entrepreneurial student or ordered online in advance by a group of friends. It is currently the third-most popular drug among 16 to 24-year-olds in the U.K., losing out only to cannabis and cocaine. During the first year of pandemic lockdowns, there was a surge in news reports about young people using it (actual usage had remained relatively stable, around 8 to 9 percent, for the previous five years).
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In late March this year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to criminalize possession of nitrous oxide, despite the objection of the Home Office’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The latest government statistics suggest a sharp decline in NOS use since 2020. Yet it is not, seemingly, the health risks of the drug that disturb its critics, so much as the shiny metal objects that dispense it. Understanding just how the canister has been marshaled lately in the longstanding tough-on-crime policy debate requires a brief jaunt through the history of N2O.
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“I felt an [sic] highly pleasurable sensation of warmth over my whole frame, resembling … returning from a walk in the snow into a warm room,” Samuel Coleridge, the romantic poet, recounted of his first time inhaling nitrous oxide, in 1799, acting upon an invitation from the chemist Humphry Davy to join a summer of self-experimentation.
Since 2016, laughing gas has been a controlled substance; illegal to sell for recreational use (such retailers face a six-month sentence), but otherwise legal to buy.
Though its “sublime” effects were first recorded two hundred years ago by a gang of Victorian psychonauts that included Peter Mark Roget (of Roget’s thesaurus) and Thomas Wedgwood (heir to the prestigious pottery firm) — laughing gas wasn’t widely available until the invention of instant whipped cream in the 1930s. Home soda siphons, which used pressurized stainless steel CO2 canisters, were already popular bar and kitchen products and soon the same manufacturers were marketing whipped cream dispensers, charged with the now infamous N20 canisters, for those who wanted to add some extra pizazz to a pudding. Today, laughing gas is typically taken with the help of a balloon and a whipped cream dispenser.
Laughing gas sold by the balloon had its moment at music festivals in the 1970s, and again in the 1990s when the rave scene elicited newfound interest. The latest “wave” can be attributed to a late noughties-era revival of club and dance music culture in the UK, which led to drugs like ecstasy making a comeback. Significantly, the advent of the Internet made it easier than ever for people to get their hands on nitrous oxide. As demand has grown, so too has the number of dubious online businesses selling whipped cream products — bought wholesale from industrial scale manufacturers such as iSi and Mosa — for 24-hour home delivery.
The British press — utilizing its favorite horrifying nickname for nitrous oxide, “hippy crack” — has enjoyed reporting on the latest reason to worry about the kids. It has been doing so since at least 2010, when laughing gas began its latest uptick; post-lockdown, the latent tabloid-panic was revived. A “terrifying epidemic [. . .] leaving young adults with spinal cord damage, burst lungs and 'unable to walk',” stated one Daily Mail headline. “More dangerous than cocaine,” another said.
As with any drug, there are health risks to the use of nitrous oxide, which alters blood flow to the brain and is believed to stimulate opioid receptors and trigger the release of dopamine. This creates a feel-good factor, yet inhalation can also lead to oxygen starvation, which can be deadly. While the brevity of the high prevents most people from serious harm, it can compel some to keep going in for more, causing psychological addiction or, with heavy use, serious nerve or neurological damage. Still, a comparative study produced by Drug Science found laughing gas to be among the three least harmful out of 22 recreational drugs. Alcohol ranked top both in terms of harm to the user and to others (cocaine, the Daily Mail might note, was in position five).
It seems typical that, in such downtrodden times for Britain, the government would throw its weight into banning a substance that gives fleeting relief to its users.
Since 2016, laughing gas has been a controlled substance; illegal to sell for recreational use (such retailers face a six-month sentence), but otherwise legal to buy. Drug law reformers point out that the authorities already have the tools to address the issue through more aggressive pursuit of illegal sellers or investment in street cleaning. Why does the government want to bring the substance under the remit of the Misuse of Drugs Act — at a time when Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is pushing for a formal decriminalization of casual weed-smoking in the capital, and Scotland wants to decriminalize the possession of any drug for personal use?
The recent promise to criminalize laughing gas is part of a wider “anti-social behavior action plan” that includes a “zero-tolerance” approach to drug use and begging, as well as heftier on-the-spot fines for fly-tipping and graffiti, and speedy evictions of disruptive tenants.
Further criminalization would be disproportionate, stated the government’s own advisory council. There was “no substantive evidence” linking nitrous oxide use with crime or antisocial behavior, it said, and warned that further sanctions could lead to the emergence of criminal networks. Despite this, the government has decided to criminalize it, as well as to expand police powers of dispersal and drug-testing on arrest.
It seems typical that, in such downtrodden times for Britain, the government would throw its weight into banning a substance that gives fleeting relief to its users. But national drug policy is notoriously performative, and low-level crime has historically been scapegoated for deeper economic failings and exploited for political clout.
Ultimately, the government is making a straw man argument about the safety of young people, rather than facing up to the myriad ways it is failing them.
Antisocial behavior has been a recurring motif in British politics ever since Margaret Thatcher pushed “law and order” up the agenda. Since the late 1980s and 90s, which saw a rise in school exclusions, the decline of social housing, and the ascent of the rave scene, young people hanging out have been in the firing line. The New Labour government, under Tony Blair’s “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” mantra, introduced the infamous ASBOs (anti-social behavior orders) in 1998. These banned people from certain behaviors, such as drinking, visiting a certain shop, having loud sex or, in one case, playing football on the street. In the mid-noughties it was “hoodies” rather than “hippy crack” that filled column inches and provoked moral hand wringing.
Now, following years of additional cuts to local services and the police, as the fallout of Brexit and the pandemic continue — and perhaps to woo voters as an election looms — the Conservatives are promising once again to get tough on petty crime. This move follows a period in which social etiquette and norms have been disrupted by Covid restrictions; now it’s time to tidy things up again. It’s also an issue that appeals to the Conservative Party’s core demographics — namely older people, and those with private homes and gardens in which to indulge in illicit activity, should they so choose, rather than public parks. Ultimately, the government is making a straw man argument about the safety of young people, rather than facing up to the myriad ways it is failing them.
As for community concerns about those glinting silver tubes, littering is already a crime; police can issue an on-the-spot fine of £150 for the canisters. And while laughing gas seems to be a widely enjoyed pastime among young Brits, it is unlikely that the impact of its criminalization will be equally felt. The addition of a new petty crime to the books is more “reasonable grounds” for police to stop and search people, an experience that is nine times more likely if you are black. Once caught, a person of color is also more likely to be charged, convicted and receive a custodial sentence. Anecdotally, laughing gas has proved popular among young Muslims, for whom other drugs and alcohol are taboo.
This stern policing of public space speaks to the way the “broken windows” theory has shaped British crime policy. First coined in 1982 by US social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling, it argues that dealing swiftly with minor — visible — signs of crime helps to create a wider culture of order. Graffiti, street-sleepers and NOS canisters are encountered day-to-day. The government may be unwilling (or incapable) of addressing more serious crimes — sexual assault, fraud, burglary, murder — but it can at least try to address the visible issues, even if it is sweeping matters under the carpet.
The NOS canister has become a symbol of reckless abandon, a proxy for the actual instabilities of society and a justification for cracking down on its fringes.
“We are doing this because if you walk through any urban park you will see these little silver canisters which are the evidence of people regarding public spaces as arenas for drug taking,” Michael Gove, the leveling up secretary, told the BBC. “It is unacceptable. People should feel those spaces are being looked after in a way which means they are safe for children.” The health concerns may seem an afterthought. As Sunak put it, the legislation is about, “putting an end to litter and intimidation in our parks.”
It is valid to feel dismay at trash on the streets. But how some litter comes to be seen as intimidating, while other forms remain politically neutral, is curious. In Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas, a British social anthropologist, examines litter, or dirt, as “matter out of place,” a “threat to good order,” she writes. To Douglas, it is really when the half-identity of the dirt still clings to it that it is most provoking. “So long as identity is absent,” writes Douglas, “rubbish is not dangerous.”
The NOS canister has become a symbol of reckless abandon, a proxy for the actual instabilities of society and a justification for cracking down on its fringes. This quick, cheap means to escape the drudgery of a country in decline embodies tensions between young and old at a moment when their respective experiences of Britain — and their future prospects within it — increasingly diverge. When taking a stroll on a Sunday morning, it may be easier to feel the threat of disarray from a scattered silver canister, than to face up to the chaos all around it.
PHOTO: Sparkwhip brand (iSi) nitrous charger, 2013. (via Wikimedia, licensed under CC0 1.0, Public Domain)