The Party Balloon Quietly Paralyzing Young People Is Still For Sale At Gas Stations And Walmart

In 2023, bystanders saw a Canberra teen inhale from a balloon, then accelerate his Holden Commodore through oncoming traffic and directly into a pond. First responders arrived within minutes, finding the car so deeply submerged that the young man could not be saved. Divers later pulled his body from the still-submerged vehicle. A coroner found that his cognitive function must have been seriously impaired by the overuse of nitrous oxide.

It can be purchased without restrictions in the United States and is found everywhere from dentists’ offices to whipped cream canisters, like in the case of an Ohio University fraternity pledge, Collin Wiant. He was subject to a brutal fraternity initiation, being forced to take substances and perform menial tasks for Sigma Pi members. Around November 2018, 911 was called, and when paramedics found him, he had already passed away. A toxicology report ruled the cause as “asphyxiation due to nitrous oxide ingestion.”

​Neither of these young men passed away from an illegally obtained substance. Both ended up inflicting neurological damage on themselves with the same gas that was previously contained in the now-discarded whipped-cream chargers sometimes strewn about outside of nightclubs or on park lawns. Nitrous oxide, sometimes called Nos, nangs or whippets, is readily available for purchase at stores, gas stations, smoke shops, and even online, through Amazon. Despite being aware of nitrous oxide’s ability to cause irreversible neurological damage to the point of being fatal, lawmakers have been tackling it piecemeal, at a glacial pace.