It can also kill you.
It’s nitrous oxide, a colorless, sweet-smelling and tasting vapor, useful commercially and deadly recreationally.
Popularly known as “laughing gas” for its tendency to produce euphoria and giggles, it has recently made headlines as an emerging party drug.
Though banned in many states as a drug, it is still available almost everywhere for culinary use. Smoke shops and gas stations—often conveniently located a block or two from a high school—sell colorful canisters of it under at least a dozen brand names, including Galaxy Gas, Goo Sticks, Miami Magic and Baking Bad. Flavors include blueberry and cotton candy.
Or you can skip the brick-and-mortar store and order directly from Amazon—as an aid to baking, of course (one review: “best high ever”).
But behind the cartoon branding and candy flavors lies a mounting body count.
“I can’t believe they’re letting me do this repeatedly, day after day.”
A first-of-its-kind comprehensive study of laughing gas deaths, released this summer, found that nitrous oxide–related fatalities spiked 578 percent between 2010 and 2023.
Another jaw-dropping revelation in the study is that more than 13 million Americans say they have inhaled nitrous oxide at least once in their lifetime.
Study co-authors Andrew Yockey and Rachel Hoopsick, assistant professors at the Universities of Mississippi and Illinois, respectively, grew concerned when the FDA issued a warning about the dangers of inhaling nitrous oxide—dangers including blood clots, frostbite, asphyxiation, heart palpitations, paralysis, hallucinations, spinal cord and brain damage, and death.
“We started researching nitrous oxide misuse after seeing headlines about young people dying from what many believed was a harmless substance,” Hoopsick said. They also heard reports of students using laughing gas on their campuses.
The laughing gas industry has grown steadily since the pandemic, during which usage spiked. Nitrous oxide manufacturers began selling much larger canisters, available online and in vape shops.
“I thought it was insane when I was buying it myself,” said Holley Hill, a recovering nitrous oxide addict. “I can’t believe they’re letting me do this repeatedly, day after day.”
Hill abused over 22,000 cartridges of the inhalant in six months—investing more than $10,000 in destroying herself.
“I would have cartridges on the passenger seat next to me. Boxes and boxes and boxes of them. And I would just screw it and do it and then another and then another one,” she recalled. “I had spent so much money that I was at the bottom of the barrel. Like chemically, I had no dopamine, no serotonin and I had no money.”
Ultimately, she became, as she said, “like a zombie. I could hardly walk.”
Looking back, Hill reflects that the drug’s accessibility is what kept her trapped for years.
But, to date, the only state with a full ban on nitrous oxide is Louisiana.
Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard warned of the dangers of nitrous oxide as early as 1950.
Meanwhile, as with every growing drug epidemic, a new frontier is emerging, with a new job title: nitrous oxide injury lawyer. This new breed of lawyer solicits and files suits on behalf of those who’ve been harmed by the drug, or in an accident caused by someone high on it. As just one example, the family of 25-year-old radiology technician Marissa Politte, killed in 2020 by a driver high on nitrous oxide, won a $745 million lawsuit in 2023 against the drug’s distributor and the smoke shop that sold the canister to the killer.
In August, during a concert in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Police Department arrested a suspect caught with some 100 metal tanks of nitrous oxide. Later that month, San Jose police busted four smoke shops that were illegally selling the substance. In September, Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco—in partnership with federal, state and local law enforcement—conducted a statewide sting resulting in 70 felony arrests and 16 warrants for retailers found selling the product for recreational use.
Lawmakers have begun recognizing the necessity of closing the “culinary use” loophole that allows pushers to operate with zero accountability. Many areas are banning sales outright, while others are stiffening the age restrictions for purchase, introducing new bills and warning smoke shops of narrower limits and harsher penalties. In Wisconsin, Florida, New York, Alabama and Minnesota, tougher laws are materializing on the books—a grim recognition of a crisis in the making.
Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard warned of the dangers of nitrous oxide as early as 1950.
And now, the gas that once made dentists’ chairs less frightening has become a silent killer—clad in candy-colored canisters, marketed for youth and branded for fun—its proliferation protected by a loophole.
Lawmakers, law enforcement and educators are now racing to contain what commerce unleashed.
Whether they succeed will depend on how quickly society decides that no thrill, no flavor, no laugh and no profit is worth another life.
Take Foundation for a Drug-Free World’s free The Truth About Inhalants course to learn more.
