Nitrous oxide (marketed as galaxy gas) as the hot new drug for the kids and sold in smoke shops with basically no laws or regulations seems really bad.
I knew it was a thing but I had no idea it was this bad for you. pic.twitter.com/R16oinYpjN
— yoni rechtman (@yrechtman) January 8, 2025
It seemed, to me, like a bad Phillip K. Dick pastiche… but apparently our all-American techbro hustle culture, in combination with 50 years of *wink-wink* ‘but of course we don’t want to use these illicit chemicals for getting high, heaven forfend’ hypocrisy has led to a ‘burgeoning epidemic’ of teenagers risking permanent damage to their nervous systems huffing stuff brand (*wink, wink*) ‘for culinary purposes only’. NYMag on the New New Thing:
In early 2023, Alex took a job at Cloud 9, a strip-mall smoke shop off Atlanta’s I-85. He had recently graduated from college and wanted something laid-back; the shop, with its graffitied ceilings and cheesy blue-light displays, seemed like the ideal register job for a stoner with a music degree.
It didn’t take long for him to realize that many of his customers weren’t there for rolling papers or vapes. They were coming instead for Galaxy Gas, the shop’s toddler-size, candy-flavored, Day-Glo–colored tanks of nitrous oxide. He didn’t know anything about nitrous when he started, but his manager walked him through the basics. “They had to teach me all the legal loopholes you had to jump through, that you had to tell customers that it was for infusing drinks or making whipped creams,” he says.
Soon, he understood exactly what nitrous oxide was. How could he not? His customers were buying hundreds of dollars worth of tanks at a time, inhaling as much as they could in the parking lot of the store, then coming back for more, often with strange new limps and tremors. “One guy would come a bunch of times a day,” Alex says (employees’ names have been changed for privacy). “We’d first see him in the morning; he’d just stuff whatever he could fit in his book bag.” Then he’d reappear a few hours later for more, stumbling and slurring his words. But what could Alex do? His card ran. Still, Alex was disturbed. He started telling customers the gas wasn’t in stock even when it was. “The fact that I’ve had to say ‘Bro, I think you’re good for the day’ is insane,” he says. “I’m not a bartender. This isn’t something where I’m obligated by law to tell you. But just out of my morals, I don’t want to be the person that sells this guy this tank and he goes and hits it in his car, then kills somebody.”
The moral calculations of smoke-shop employees like Alex are the only limit on customers’ ability to purchase as much nitrous oxide as they want. While it’s illegal to sell nitrous oxide explicitly for recreational use, companies can carry it if they say it’s a food-processing propellant for whipped cream and culinary products. Thanks to this loophole, it can be sold legally over the counter (to those 21 and over, depending on the state), online, and in bulk and delivered by head shops like Cloud 9 as well as large chains like Ace Hardware, Walmart, and Amazon.
In the past few years, as nitrous has grown in popularity, distributors have inundated the market with bigger, brighter, and better-tasting tanks. This marketing has been especially effective among teens, who are already accustomed to inhaling flavored substances. But nitrous is a lot more dangerous than the vapes with which it shares shelf space. Heavy users report seizures, mouth lesions, paralysis, brain damage, psychosis, and spinal-cord degeneration. Pedestrians are being killed by drivers huffing in their cars. Those outcomes haven’t slowed the drug’s rise, and for those who got in on the nitrous market early — like Cloud 9 — the trade has been unfathomably lucrative. Alex didn’t know that his employer wasn’t just selling Galaxy Gas — it created the brand. Nor did he know that eventually, according to a Cloud 9 executive, the company’s output would grow to represent nearly 30 percent of all nitrous sold in the country. “They are gray-market specialists,” says another former employee, Chris. “And they’re capitalizing on people’s inability to legislate as fast as they can make new products.”…
Cloud 9 was opened by Ben Amor in 2011, when he was a business student at Kennesaw State, a large public university near Atlanta. Ben’s family had immigrated from Morocco to the U.S. and opened a handful of businesses near their home in Georgia, including a used-car lot and a hookah lounge. Ben worked at the lounge during college, and when customers started trying to buy the hookahs directly, he decided to open a smoke shop of his own across the street. “It was only 700 square feet, the rent was only $700; there wasn’t much risk,” Ben said in 2019 on a podcast called HSTL UP. Atlanta is a smoker’s paradise — “If you go to the nail salon, you’ll have hookah as an option,” an employee at one of the Amors’ first shops says — and there were soon plenty of customers…
… Using Cloud 9 sales data as market research, the brothers created their own versions of smoke-shop products under the SBK brand, which they sold at Cloud 9. They quickly landed on what Brady describes as the “candy-bar method,” designing disposable vape cartridges in flavors like Pandora Peach and Rocket Rozay. “They weren’t going for, like, a 20-year smoker,” Brady says. “They were going for someone who is young and impressionable.” Nitrous had been sold in the shops in small canisters from brands like Whip-It! But sales had never been huge — “It was solid business, just in the background,” Brady says. “It wasn’t like, Oh, we’re making a ton of money off the stuff all the time.” But in 2020, they noticed their nitrous numbers suddenly started ticking up. The Amors weren’t sure why, but they wanted in. (Cloud 9 and SBK International refused to respond to a comprehensive list of questions, saying in a statement: “These so-called ‘facts’ are, on the whole, false and defamatory at best. We will not dignify them with a direct response.”)…
The Amors didn’t make their own version of the product right away. The gas market in America is controlled by a few major distributors that handle the complicated work of importing gas, often from China. Each distributor has its own small portfolio of brands — United Brands owns Whip-It!, for instance, and Commerce Enterprises owns Miami Magic and InfusionMax…
Alas, the good times couldn’t last forever; eventually big media and local police departments wised up. Being a good Hustle Guy means knowing when to shut down the wagon and skip town…
… CBS produced a segment; USA Today published a story; police departments warned parents about the trend. “Galaxy Gas came out of nowhere and is being mass marketed to black children,” tweeted SZA. In response, the Amors began asking their employees to go on TikTok and send corporate every video featuring Galaxy Gas they could find. Disclaimers began appearing on customers’ receipts. “They filmed a commercial that was playing in-store that showed someone in a chef’s outfit with a Galaxy Gas logo making whipped cream in a kitchen,” says Zack. “That one felt like a giant ‘cover your ass.’” But it was too late. An employee remembers one of the Amors bemoaning his fate on a call with corporate leaders: “I created Galaxy Gas for the people in Phish parking lots, not for the rappers in Atlanta.” The Amors went quiet, deleting their social-media accounts and wiping Galaxy Gas promotional videos from the internet. They got a crisis-PR firm…
But for gas heads, there are plenty of options. A search for “nitrous oxide tank” on Amazon returns dozens of colorful, candy-flavored results: AmazWhip, Exotic Whip, CyberWhip, and RelaxWhip. Websites like nitrousdelivery.com offer late-night delivery in cartons of six and free shipping on orders of $100 or more. Smoke shops in Atlanta are now stocking a Galaxy Gas rip-off called Cosmic Gas; last year, Miami Magic launched a new XL tank, which is almost double Galaxy Gas’s largestsize. It’s currently on back order, a rep told me, “due to high demand.” There are plenty of options for those wanting to sell gas, too. Over the past few weeks, I reached out to nine Chinese gas manufacturers, telling them that I worked for an American smoke-shop chain looking to purchase millions of tanks of nitrous a month to sell specifically for recreational use. All were ready and willing. “No problem,” responded a representative for a company called Langfang Yolo Technology. I followed up to clarify that I’d be selling the tanks for people to get high — that would be fine, right? “Yes, friend.”
KatKapCC
Whatever happened to just sniffing some Elmer’s and getting on with your life.
Kids these days…
Baud
@KatKapCC:
Nitrous was a thing when I was young. It’s been around for a long time. (I never did it).
KatKapCC
@Baud: I’m aware. I was making a joke. I thought that’s what we did ’round these parts.
Barbara
@Baud: It’s now more widely available for culinary use, so I assume much easier to get.
Harrison Wesley
Nitrous oxide? Didn’t that used to be called ‘laughing gas’ back around the early to mid 1900s?
Baud
@KatKapCC:
I prefer to keep things professional.
Anne Laurie
I’m so old, I can remember when some ‘conservatives’ virulently insisted that AIDS wasn’t a real virus, it was just the result of those feelthy homos doing too many poppers at their nightly orgies. Pretty sure some of the young Charlie-Kirk-style revanchists are still lying about this, but I ain’t gonna google!
KatKapCC
@Baud: Your clothing choices say otherwise, or so I’ve been told! :P
KatKapCC
@Anne Laurie: They definitely still think that way, if the response on the right to monkeypox a few years ago is any indication. MTG basically said “who cares, it’s mostly gays getting it”. Quiet part out loud, yet again.
Chetan Murthy
ha!
Bill Arnold
Useful wikipedia article on the topic:
Recreational use of nitrous oxide
I’d suggest erowid.org, but they appear to have a bad web certificate now.
bjacques
I miss the Whip-In off I-35, south Austin. I still have a box of whippets. It’s been awhile…
Gin & Tonic
@Anne Laurie: Nitrous and poppers are two different things. Like Baud, I remember nitrous being a thing in college a long time ago. But it was hard to get. Poppers were big when I was in NYC in pre-AIDS days.
TBone
This was a big thing in my high school days. Also, saw a friend decimate ALL of the whipped cream canisters at the supermarket, one after the other. Thankfully, their stock was low that day.
It was not hard to get back in the day.
TBone
PSA Judy Holliday is on TCM in Born Yesterday at 8pm. Broderick Crawford plays Trump. A delightful piece of Americana propaganda.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Yesterday_(1950_film)
SiubhanDuinne
I had major dental issues for years. Eventually (around the year 2000), had full mouth extraction and the complete implants.
The only way I got through those procedures was by having my dentist prescribe me two little tabs of diazepam, one to take the night before, the other about a half hour before the oral surgery. Then I always insisted on nitrous oxide before they came at me with Novocain or lidocaine or whatever (I am also needle-phobic).
Have never once been interested in either the pills or the gas outside of dental surgery, but I probably would never have managed to get through it without the Valium or laughing gas.
ColoradoGuy
The Victorians got off on it. Very popular at the turn of the century.
Speaking personally, if I’m facing an unpleasant dental procedure, I ask for nitrous. In that setting, they carefully meter the gas percentage, monitor how out-of-it I am, and give a 100% oxygen flush at the end, which brings you down in seconds.
The goal is to be quite out of it (halfway to the Moon), but not to the point of dizziness or nausea, and report to the staff how you’re doing every few minutes (with hand signals). It’s a 2-way process that requires communication between staff and patient, and you adjust for altitude as things go along. Too high? Dial it back. Starting to feel pain or fear? Crank it up.
Makes something traumatic feel like it’s happening to somebody else, and speeds up time severalfold. No actual laughter, but no fear or terror, either. Sounds get very distorted and slowed down. It does improve country music.
Anne Laurie
@Gin & Tonic: Whoops! Obviously, I was not paying enough attention to the drugs I was never going to be using…
Anne Laurie
I will freely admit that I’m one of the small minority who reacts badly to nitrous oxide (throwing up into a mouthpiece, not recommended), so this whole phenomenon has an extra layer of WTF for me.
eclare
@Baud:
Yeah, I remember going to a fraternity formal in 1987 and on Saturday afternoon, sitting by the pool, you’d hear a metal canister hit the pool deck every couple of minutes.
The only time I’ve had it was in a dentist’s office. And as someone commented, the office monitors you the whole time, and you’re fine to drive home afterwards.
Tim in SF
Just a note – nitrous isn’t a hydrocarbon; comparisons to glue, poppers, VCR cleaner, or other inhalants someone “huffs” are not accurate.
NeenerNeener
My mother used to tell a story about the one time she had nitrous for a dental procedure. She dreamed she was on a conveyor belt with a bunch of other bodies, and there was a machine above the conveyor belt putting souls into the bodies. She was worried that it wouldn’t put her soul into the correct body.
She never took nitrous again.
Gin & Tonic
@Anne Laurie: “Poppers” refers to amyl nitrite or butyl nitrite, which are vasodilators. Medically used for angina pain. Their use for sexual recreation purposes is left as an exercise.
Sister Golden Bear
@Gin & Tonic:
Still big among gay men. At least in San Francisco, they’re pretty ubiquitous in gay-oriented adult/gift shops.
FWIW, aside from causing euphoria they also work as muscle relaxant (both extremely brief).
trollhattan
@Baud: Moms across America for decades have been puzzled why that nearly new can of whipped cream would not squirt any whipped cream.
espierce
@eclare:
Stopped by my brother’s place once back in the early 80’s and as I sat down on the couch, it clanked. You guessed it, empty whippet containers everywhere.
scav
@Anne Laurie: I don’t know if I’ve an unusually bad reaction to it, but sweet air was the single solitary thing I most hated about going to the dentist growing up. Luckily, we moved and the rest never assumed I was necessarily anxious.
Fair Economist
@Bill Arnold: The killer problem is that nitrous oxide inactivates the essential vitamin B12, which can produce very serious neurological effects, including brain damage. Normally the body stores months or even years of vitamin B12; vegans who aren’t careful to get it eventually start getting problems, but it takes years, and it . Nitrous oxide, however, damages the stored B12 and the body doesn’t properly distinguish between functional and damaged B12 and major problems can develop in just a few months – possibly weeks with serious enough abuse.
Booger
@Tim in SF: It is, however an oxidizer, and I hate to think of some of the hazards it could create in that respect.
catclub
@Chetan Murthy: It was Tester’s glue.
Sister Golden Bear
@NeenerNeener: The son of a friend of mine died a few years ago after huffing nitrous and having a psychotic break, ending in him jumping out the window and running out to the highway and throwing himself into the path of car.
No idea if it was a bad trip (not sure how much he’d done), or if it was somehow contaminated. I hadn’t done nitrous very often in my life, but needless that killed any desire to do it again, ever if it was a “we’ve never seen that before” event per the police and coroner.
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear:
Oh that’s awful.
Almost Retired
@trollhattan: I can’t stop giggling about this comment, and my wife is looking at me like I’m supremely weird. Which she often does.
zhena gogolia
@TBone: Trump will never have the winsome charm of Broderick Crawford.
RaflW
@bjacques: My brother told me about doing whippets in high school in western PA in the early 1980s. It was definitely not as easy to score them back then. The few culinary places that sold them would (i’m imagining) limit the count to a small number, and not tolerate kids coming back anytime soon.
So it was a very, very occasional one-hitter for his not-stoner, but liked to drink beer underage group. I was too young for all of that then. My underage drinking career started a few years later after dad’s transfer to (ugh) Texas
(Walmart online now sells flavored 1.1L ‘whipped cream’ charging tanks. Jebus)
NotMax
@baud
Yup Whippits, in the slanguage of the times.
Everything old is new again.
cmorenc
Nitrous Oxide is a wonderful way to make a root canal procedure at the dentist actually enjoyable with good music and earbuds, but it isn’t *that* good to use as a recreational drug, especially compared to the high good pot gives you, with vastly less harmful risk especially as edibles. The big value for dentistry is its ability to dissociate pain and anxiety, as well from as the discomforting vibration from drilling. Obviously not the sort of situation you’d seek out except when bona fide necessary.
But pot shops in places that have legalized it are *very* strict about rigorously checking ID for age verification, no matter how obvious it is from your appearance that you are not merely 21, but somewhere north of 60. Which fact obviously tempts teens to seek out legal loophole methods like NO2. The solution is to make NO2 legal to sell only to age-verified adults over-21, just as has been done with alcohol, cigarettes and pot.
JMG
Golly, I was involved with a group of people who formed a phony movie company to get nitrous tanks in the early ’70s. We said it was to cool the hot lights. Welding supply companies didn’t know any better. It was big for like 6 months to a year, then interest dropped off. Don’t know why.
Captain C
I feel like nitrous has been around forever (they were called “whippets” when I was growing up), but this flavored thing is new. I can’t imagine whatever they’re putting in for flavor is good for the lungs.
Nitrous balloons have been a big business in the parking lots of Dead, Phish, and other jamband shows as long as I can remember. About 14 or 15 years ago, I was walking back to the subway from a Widespread Panic show on a pier in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the entirety of North 11th from Kent to Wythe was a big nitrous market, with tanks set up every, oh, 10-20 yards or so and lots of Spreadheads happily huffing their balloons, though not always careful enough about finding a soft place to land. Apparently, the east coast parking lot nitrous trade is (or at least was) controlled by the Nitrous Mafia, per the linked Village Voice article.
Also, back in my college years, I was on the PATH train and saw a guy standing across from me taking a big hit off an old-fashioned refillable whipped cream dispenser, that obviously had no whipped cream in it. Eventually, he tumbled over. As always happens, one guy tried to help while everyone else ignored the situation. Since he didn’t hit the deck hard, I figured he’d be fine once his momentary high wore off (he was, he got up, and repeated several times to his buddy, “Maaaannnn, that was fucked up! That was fucked up!”).
I had it at the dentist once, for when I had the first two of my wisdom teeth out. It was a weird experience. I’ve also done whippets a few times with friends (a long time ago), always on a horizontal service. It was always so short-lasting and became uninteresting quickly in part for this reason. There’s a reason they call it hippie crack. Though it might be an interesting experience if you had a trained anesthesiologist to curate your high, and a very comfy bed to lie down on
(ed. for punctuation)
Captain C
@cmorenc:
Seconded.
CaseyL
Sigh. The kids will smoking bananas again, next.
Now that pot is legal practically everywhere, I do not understand why anyone in search of a casual high looks for or uses anything else.
Or is pot now considered a drug only “the olds” enjoy?
Jeffro
“bigger, brighter, and better-tasting tanks” (of nitrous oxide)
good lord
this is on top of vaping, ‘Kratom’ (whatever that is), ‘Zyn’, and more
where does Gen Z go to get its apology for this (and endless school lockdowns, unaddressed climate change emergencies, etc etc etc)?
Jeffro
omg THAT’s my new band’s name, effective tomorrow!
holy cow that’s great!
(“Test for Echo” already copyrighted ;)
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Captain C: Pioneering chemist Humphrey Davy did experiments with nitrous oxide circa 1800. He did large quantities frequently for a while and introduced some of the intelligencia of the day to it, including I think the poet Coleridge.
I saw a couple people do whippets in college. Their lips turned blue and thought that was a bad sign so decided maybe better to steer clear.
TBone
@zhena gogolia: hahaha!
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear: I used to love a fat balloon of nitrous in a concert parking lot. But I really had no urge to stop which scared me especially when I suddenly woke up on the ground after passing out from a really big hit. That was the last time for me.
RoseWeiss
@Captain C: @cmorenc I’ll third that. I had nitrous for a root canal, and it made the whole process really easy. I had been skeptical because a previous dentist had talked me into trying it during a routine dental procedure, and I absolutely hated it – I was extremely uncomfortable until it wore off. The staff for the root canal must have been a lot more skillful in judging dosage etc.
kindness
Meh. We used to buy Whippits and use seltzer bottles to take hits in the 70’s. The fear mongering over people doing nitrous is a bit much. I’m not saying it’s healthy for you but it isn’t heroin, coke or crank. We lived through it.
RevRick
@Captain C: I haven’t had nitrous for dental work since I had my wisdom teeth removed forty years ago. I had a tooth pulled a couple of months ago with just a few shots of Novocain. For me the worst part is those cotton wads they stuff in your mouth to stanch the bleeding, because it triggers my gag reflex.
MobiusKlein
For dental stuff, I just naturally go dissociative. The procedure is happening, yes, but somewhere else. What’s weird is all the saliva and water that pools in my mouth.
brendancalling
I’m late to the party (as usual) but… how is this news? I saw something about this earlier in the week as the new thing to be freaked out about, but I first learned about whippets when I was 16 and tripping on acid in my friend’s backyard. I was lying in a hammock, and when I took the hit, everything turned into a giant tie-dye, and as I exhaled I melted through the hammock with the corners of my mouth flying off my face in giant, electric-blue droplets. I tried the stuff one other time, but it was definitely not for me.
When I was going to Dead, Phish, and Allman Brothers Band shows in the mid-90s, the parking lot always had a few people with a tank of nitrous selling balloons. It’s definitely not good for you.
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
@Baud:
For sure. Whipits were cheap, short-lived fun and something entirely different if you did them while tripping. They were sold in mini-tanks by the case at head shops everywhere. A lot more fun and way less headache-inducing than Locker Room/Rush.
Rose Judson
UK hospitals give women in labor nitrous, so that’s the only time I’ve ever had it. I would come out of a contraction and be aware of the sounds I’d been making and start laughing hysterically.
Had a crash c-section in the end, but at least the midwives were amused during that bit.
TheQuietOne
I had nitrous oxide once at the dentist’s office. You do start giggling uncontrollably. Then I got some of the worst nausea ever. It didn’t make my tooth extraction fun at all.
@Harrison Wesley:
Kayla Rudbek
@KatKapCC: or polishing your shoes to get the hit of VOCs?