This week saw a campaign I have been leading come to fruition.
Readers may well have seen the small, silver gas canisters lying around public spaces. These are the detritus left by users of nitrous oxide. Better known as laughing gas, it gives a short term high that goes quickly, but is, say users, fun at the time. Of course, many people will be familiar with it – mothers are given a mixture of gas and air during child birth, dentists use it as an anasthetic, and it is used as a generator of foam for cooking purposes.
However, the use of it for a high is contrary to the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Psychoactive Substances Act. Both prohibit supply for the use of recreational use. Yet despite this, many users pick this up from local corner shops. You can buy it online, and if you want to be a wholesaler at a carnival, you can buy it by the palette load. The Notting Hill Carnival this year even had skips provided for the removal of canisters.
Many people have complained to me about the antisocial behaviour and litter, but what has bothered me the most is the neurological damage that is done to users.
Users don’t just have a sniff and a laugh. They use it for hours at a time. As a drug, it is not addictive, but its effects can be. The problem is it affects the nervous system. Dr David Nicholl, a local neurologist who persuaded me to take up this cause, described its effects as similar to stripping the insulation from the human body’s wiring. David has seen patients lose the ability to walk – probably permanently, from using NoX. When I held a debate in Parliament about this earlier this year, someone wrote to me describing how her talented brother, who was on track to be an England sporting representative and was at the start of his City career, succumbed to NoX. Eventually, he took his own life.
As a result of the campaign I have championed in Parliament, NoX is now a class C drug. Its position is liable to an unlimited fine and up to two years in prison.
I hope the police, as they start to enforce this law, take an approach that doesn’t immediately send users to jail, rather use it as a warning. But without making a bold statement, many lives will be ruined by using NoX. Laughing gas is definitely no laughing matter.