Whippets Stir Up Health Concerns

A rise in the abuse of flavored nitrous gas by young adults has medical professionals concerned about health effects.

By: Daimler Koch, Online Editor

A dealer in downtown Los Angeles distributes nitrous oxide balloons to buyers. (Daniel Padilla for The Valley Star)

A dangerous new trend is spreading across social media, where young people are using “whippets”—nitrous oxide canisters to get high.

Besides its uses in the medical industry, nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, has been used in the culinary world as part of whipped cream chargers that create the treat for desserts and coffees. 

Young people are inhaling the gas from these cartridges for a quick high; some post videos online in an effort to seem cool and gain views. Some videos show participants shopping for vanilla cupcake and strawberry cream flavored canisters. 

“Consciously or subliminally, the message is, this is OK for kids,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, a physician at New York Presbyterian and Weill Cornall Medical Center according to the New York Times.

The videos have circulated widely on social media, to the point where it features its own tab under TikTok.

Nevertheless, out of ten students that were approached for an interview on the subject at Valley College, only two knew enough about it to comment. 

Student Daniel Frausto became aware of the trend during the summer, when he first saw a video on social media of a high schooler trying a strawberry-flavored canister, making his voice become deeper. 

“It’s mostly peer pressure,” Frausto said. “There might be some kids out there pressuring you to do something cool and trying to gain some views, to be one of the cool guys or something like that.”

Frausto believes the algorithms of social media platforms are partially to blame, as they function to serve viewers’ interests first and foremost. 

If a viewer likes a video, the algorithm is more likely to suggest videos with similar topics later on.

Engineering major  Andy Sola has seen the consequences manifest outside of social media. 

“I’ve seen it happen in public, just people doing it,” Sola said. “I’ve seen people just filling balloons with it, and they’ll breathe out of that.”

In an interview with CBS News, Megan Paquin, a spokesperson for Galaxy Gas,  one of the top canister venders, revealed that the company stopped selling them on Sept. 19 due to the widespread consequences of the product. “While Galaxy Gas has been the focus of many news reports and social media videos, many of the videos show individuals misusing other, unrelated nitrous oxide products. Galaxy Gas is neither the only nor the largest nitrous oxide brand,” she said in the report.

Still, that has not kept the canisters, or the dangerous side effects of nitrous oxide out of young people’s hands. Abuse of laughing gas, which cuts off the oxygen to the brain, can produce a range of symptoms from frostbite to hypoxia (a lack of oxygen), to death.

“I’m a little concerned, if I’m going to be honest,” Frausto said. “People buy them just for attention. It’s messed up.”