Solvent and Volatile Substance Abuse

VSA Headlines: November 2011

2011-12-09T11:22:00.042Z

The death of 14-year-old Bethany Adcock this month reminds us once again that “volatile substance misuse remains an important problem in the UK, especially in terms of causing premature death amongst young people” (St George's, University of London: Trends in UK deaths associated with abuse of volatile substances, 1971-2008).

UK

Solvent addict jailed for breaking can ban: A solvent addict has been jailed for possessing canisters of butane gas in a park just days after he was banned from having them in public.

Lethal ‘Laughing gas’ abuse in Sidmouth council car park: Thrill-seekers appear to be dicing with death in a council car park - by illegally inhaling gas for a giggle.

And finally, an interesting blog post from a retailer who "was surprised recently to discover that we were being targeted by a substance abuser." An area of legislation that does not get much publicity is solvent abuse.

CZECH REPUBLIC

Fifty-five persons die of drug overdose in Czech Republic in 2010: Out of the 55 drug overdose cases resulting in deaths in 2010, 19 people used opiates, 18 used methamphetamine (pervitine), 16 used volatile substances and two Fentanyl, known as synthetic heroin.

USA

Teen dies after huffing freon (GA): A 13-year-old boy died in his neighbors yard. Police believe the victim had been huffing Freon from an air conditioning unit.

Midwest City dad hopes son's death serves as inhalant abuse warning (OK): Raymond Randall King III, 13, was found dead Friday next to a home air conditioning unit in his Midwest City neighborhood.

Freon is a rapidly growing concern in the US and a host of other stories were carried by radio and television stations across the US this month, including WPRI, KSDK, KRMG, News on 6, Fox 19 and Fox 40.

Man dead after "huffing" propane vapors (MO): The Maries County Sheriff's Department said 41-year-old Keith A. Wood died Sunday after inhaling propane vapors.

Coroner rules Rosas’ death an ‘accident’ (TX): Rosas’ death was caused by “hyperthermia with significant contributing factor of inhalant abuse,” and that the “manner was an accident.”

Officials believe North Huntingdon victim inhaled chemical vapors (PA): A man found dead in a North Huntingdon creek on Wednesday had a history of arrests for inhaling chemical vapors, and "huffing" may have contributed to his death, police said.

Inhalant Abuse: The Fight Continues: Burning Tree, a long term treatment center, announces that inhalant abuse is still on the rise and watching for warning signs of abuse will help prevent addiction.

Inhalant abuse on the rise in Humboldt County: The Humboldt County Coroner's Office highlighted an increase in the use of nitrous oxide and other inhalants in a press conference Friday.

Gehring woman gets 1 year in jail for huffing: A Gehring woman has been sentenced to one year in jail on charges she huffed inhalants to get high and helped children inhale propellants from spray cans while she supervised them during an after-school program.

AUSTRALIA

Sniffing danger persists due to Yalata Opal delay: A long-promised introduction of Opal fuel to the far west coast of South Australia is yet to happen.Welfare agency Uniting Care Wesley thinks the delay is endangering the health of the local community.

In search of a high, butane gas sniffer blows through the roof (Wahroonga, NSW): A WOMAN addicted to sniffing butane gas blew her car to bits as she indulged her habit yesterday.

NEW ZEALAND

Coroner calls for warnings on 'huffing': The Otago Southland coroner has called on the Ministry of Health to increase publicity on the dangers of "huffing" after the death of a Wyndham teenager last year.

PHILIPPINES

Murder suspect blames solvent use (Manila): Witnesses said Saltarin was under the influence of household solvents when he was trying to extort money from de Jesus who happened to be in the area.

CHILDREN can no longer buy volatile substances like rugby and sealants from Mandaue City establishments. The Mandaue City Council passed on third and final reading an ordinance penalizing unauthorized distribution of these substances especially to minors.

INDIA

Well-off children also becoming solvent addicts (Kolkata): The menace of solvent addiction - which was once termed as the addiction of children living on platforms and pavements - is slowly creeping into the backyards of affluent families with their kids also becoming victims of the menace, an NGO said Monday.

November 21st 2011

2011-11-21T11:19:00.002Z

Sadly to report the death of 14-year-old Bethany Adcock from Sheffield after inhaling fumes from an aerosol can. Dr Richard Oliver, Sheffield GP and joint clinical director of NHS Sheffield, said: “Solvent abuse can cause as many deaths as ecstasy."

The Headteacher at Bethany's School has said: “The school has experienced the sudden death of Bethany Adcock. We are deeply saddened by her death, Bethany was a Year 10 student, popular and friendly. Her sudden death is a tragic accident but it will obviously have an impact on the whole school, in particular those who were her friends and knew her well." (Yorkshire Post)

VSA Headlines: August - Sept 2011

2011-11-02T08:38:00.067Z

We are grateful this month to Children and Young People Now, who featured the problem of VSA and how best to help those affected by it in their Skills for the Job section.

News headlines from the UK and around the world include:

UK

Care Home kids in 'extreme danger': A Newtownards mother, whose 12 year old daughter was put into the care of the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust and housed in their William Street residence in the town, believes the behaviour she learned from older residents during her time there has put her in extreme danger from solvent abuse.

Boy, four, and girl, two, found wandering along dual carriageway: The boy and his sister had been staying at their grandmother’s flat on March 27 with their mum and dad. Police searched the property and found the parents asleep, surrounded by scores of empty aerosol cans used by the solvent-sniffing dad.

Bangor man died after inhaling lighter fluid in bed: James Campbell, 29, had been addicted to butane gas from the age of 14 - using up to eight containers a day, Belfast coroner Joanne Donelly heard.

Glue sniffing Ardoyne rioter exposed himself court is told: An alleged rioter was seen on CCTV sniffing glue and throwing a petrol bomb at police, a court has heard.

Jail threat to Norwich man who inhales 16 cans of butane gas every day: The 31-year-old has a lengthy past of criminal offences around the city due to an addiction to sniffing butane gas,  which he uses as an anti-depressant.

Ex-heroin addict was high on aerosol: A former heroin addict got high on aerosol in front of children and their parents in broad daylight in a popular Worcester park.

Man breached Asbo when caught sniffing gas in park: A homeless man breached his antisocial behaviour order (Asbo) when he was caught sniffing gas in a park, a court heard.

Solvent abuser jailed after violating public toilets ban: A solvent abuser has been jailed for violating an Asbo which banned her from every public toilet in East Lothian - just ten days after the order was issued.

Ross youngsters warned about solvent abuse dangers: Young people in Ross-shire are being warned about the dangers of solvent and aerosol abuse after a number of cases were reported to Northern Constabulary over the past few weeks. The police have also issued warnings to parents over solvent abuse.

Ilkley youngsters warned over inhaling laughing gas: Young people are putting themselves at risk by inhaling laughing gas nitrous oxide in the latest “legal high” trend to hit the Ilkley area, police have warned.

USA

Kohl calls on National Drug Control Office to combat spike in "huffing" deaths, accidents: Senator Herb Kohl asked the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to combat“ huffing,” the deliberate inhaling of common household items, as part of the office’s comprehensive efforts to curb drug abuse and drugged driving.

Teens Using Freon to Get High: The latest statistics from the poison control centers report Freon huffing killed at least two teens in 2009 and sent more than 2,000 to the hospital. One of the many other stories on this subject focuses on Mona Casey: Mom who lost son to 'huffing' battles latest trend.

3 charged in Ardmore teen's death: The teens allegedly purchased a inhalant at a local grocery store. Ladd said the defendants encouraged Ozment, who was a minor, to abuse the intoxicating substance, which ultimately led to her death.

Dothan (AL) woman may have died from "huffing," police say: Dothan Police Department investigators say a woman found dead today may have died from an accidental overdose from "huffing."

Oak Hill police charge driver in fatal crash: Police say a Fayette County man was under the influence of inhalants when he crashed his vehicle, killing his passenger and injuring a pedestrian.

Charges in deadly nitrous oxide inhalation crash: Prosecutors say a Southern California driver was inhaling nitrous oxide gas to get high at the time of a fiery crash that killed a passenger and injured two others.

Father charged with huffing behind the wheel: A young father is accused of putting his own bad habits before the safety of his two young daughters. Other stories concerning criminal activity associated with VSA included those from Wichita (KA), Gering (NE), Eau Claire County (WI), Apple Valley (MN), Cumberland County (PA), Bismarck (ND), Natrona County (WY), Naples (FL), Hamilton (NJ), and news that a city huffing ordinance is one step closer to reality following a unanimous vote by the Spencer City Council (IA).

Neighbor Says Brooklyn Concert Turns Into Nitrous Oxide Fest: A show last weekend ended with dozens of fans taking to the streets, to get high. And as CBS 2’s Derricke Dennis reports, concerts may now be in jeopardy.

CANADA

Suicides spur plea from First Nation's ex-chief: The coroner's report paints a devastating picture of residents struggling tenaciously against poverty and deprivation, fighting substance abuse, unemployment and domestic violence. More than a quarter of girls in Grades 3 and 4 said they tried sniffing gasoline, the report says.

AUSTRALIA

Service demands rise: The recent spate in suicides across the region has highlighted the importance of community institutions in providing a safe and trustworthy place for troubled teens to seek help. Volatile substance misuse (VSM) coordinator at YPA Liz Toeke said the YPA staff had continuously worked to build strong relationships with young people to provide a supportive base to cater for their needs. A separate article notes that four of the five youths who died had a history of solvent abuse and petrol sniffing and that the ongoing inquest has previously been told that there are no centres in WA which treat solvent abuse nor is there legislation which can force abusers to be committed for treatment. The West Australian government should introduce mandatory rehabilitation for solvent abusers in remote communities, the inquest has heard.

More remote communities act to curb petrol sniffing: The Northern Territory Government says almost 75 percent of communities in east Arnhem Land are taking part in a program to curb substance abuse.

PHILIPPINES

Teen raped, killed in QC: Authorities suspect that young men who inhale solvents, commonly called “rugby boys”, were responsible for the crime.

Cops arrest 'rugby boys' in EDSA: A group of minors allegedly responsible for a series of robberies along EDSA was arrested by officials of the Quezon City Police District on Tuesday. These young people, also commonly called "rugby boys," are often seen under the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) in EDSA-Cubao inhaling solvents used as roof sealants.

MALAYSIA

Glue Sniffing Becoming Serious In Malaysia: Glue sniffing is becoming more serious in the country with those as young as 12 years-old found to be involved in the activity, said Malaysian Crime Prevention Foundation (MCPF) vice-chairman, Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye.

INDIA

Lack of awareness encouraging substance abuse among children: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) under the Women and Child Development Ministry has emphasized the need to generate awareness among children on the harmful effects of inhalants.

Kids glued to solvents have NGOs worried: Brij is one of the many street children who live dangerously so that they can finance their craving for drugs. Volunteers claim that children as young as four are addicted to substances like cobbler's glue.

Whitener inhaling addiction on the rise among minors: Fourteen-year-old Manish (name changed) stabbed his father with a kitchen knife recently and was sent to juvenile custody. What makes this stray case of juvenile crime all the more complicated is that Manish is addicted to sniffing whitener, a cheaper and potentially dangerous way to get high.

NIGERIA

A worrisome addiction trend: Many youths are gradually resorting to hitherto harmless substances in the wave of onslaught on the usage of the regular banned substances by the authorities.

VSA Headlines: October 2011

2011-11-01T12:17:00.049Z

Many apologies for the delay in updating the blog. It's been a busy few months working on some exciting project applications to better support both adults and young people in the UK whose lives are affected by volatile substance abuse. Thanks for bearing with us, and here are the latest VSA news headlines from around the world.

UK

Mother raises concerns over death of son: A mother has raised concerns that a gas canister containing lighter fluid was found in her son's room at a Bristol psychiatric hospital after he died. "We feel he might have died through inhaling the lighter gas and this has been covered up," she said.

Inhaling gas killed alcoholic, 41: An alcoholic who was too broke to buy drink died from sniffing a can of lighter fluid, an inquest has ruled.

Chilling insight into world of addiction: Paul fell into drugs aged nine. A friend suggested he started sniffing solvents and he decided to try it.

Off-licencee in court for selling gas to children: An off-licence in Hatch End has been forced pay nearly £1,000 after selling butane gas to children.

USA

The Alliance for Consumer Education Names Senator Herb Kohl Honorary Chair: Senator Kohl is a strong advocate for ACE’s flagship program of inhalant abuse prevention. Through his involvement, ACE looks to further raise the profile of the program to help amplify its educational message to parents and communities across the country on the dangers of misusing household products.

An inhalant-steeped, incoherent and armed James Parker Coogler holed up in a Belgrade storage unit for more than six hours while officers tried to coax him out.

Man Huffing Fuel Hit, Killed By Train (St Albans, WV): A Kanawha County man was killed when he was hit by a train in St. Albans over the weekend.

A host of vehicle accidents caused by VSA continue to be reported, including 'Huffing' causes Dracut teen to crash into 2 women (Lowell, MA) and the case of a woman charged with huffing from an aerosol can before she crashed her car and injured her 1-year-old son (Huntingdon, PA).

CANADA

NAN calls for women's addiction treatment facility. Deputy Grand Chief Mike Metatawabin of Nishnawbe Aski Nation said a women’s addiction treatment facility is badly needed. He made the comments during Ka-Na-Chi-Hih’s 11th annual SAAFE (solvent abuse awareness for everyone) walk.

AUSTRALIA

Coroner hands down suicide inquest findings: Mr Hope has made five recommendations including that legislation be introduced to force solvent abusers into treatment which would bring WA laws into line with those in the Northern Territory. Petrol sniffing has been partly blamed for a small Aboriginal community in Western Australia's far north having a suicide rate 100 times greater than the general population. A coroner's verdict on a second incident that occured in Kilkenny in 2009 has led to calls that the State 'needs petrol sniffing laws', while Health Minister John Hill has confirmed that the South Australian Government will now urgently look at ways to counter petrol sniffing.

Sniffing a 'hidden habit' for city Aborigine s: Warren Miller and Jimmy Perry spend most of the year travelling through South Australia with their swags trying to divert people in Aboriginal communities away from petrol sniffing. Aboriginal elder Major Sumner is doing similar work in Adelaide, and helped establish a mobile assistance patrol for Aboriginal addicts more than 20 years ago and regularly picks up those suffering alcohol, drugs and sniffing addictions.

Murri Court may help fight against crime in Mount Isa: “... police will continue to work closely with other government and non-government organisations in support of these programs, including a volatile substance misuse (VSM) taskforce with Young People Ahead and Youth Invest, in an attempt to reduce associated offences stemming from young people who are engaging in VSM.”

Child abuse allegations hit NT rehab clinic: Police investigating suspected child abuse have removed six children from a substance rehabilitation centre in Central Australia. The outstation, south of Alice Springs, is a treatment facility for volatile substance abusers.

NEW ZEALAND

Dangers of 'huffing' stressed: The dangers of "huffing" have been highlighted at the inquest of a Southland man. Andrew John Taylor, 17, died on December 1 after inhaling butane.

FIJI

Sniffers thrive on easy access to glue: Kids are sniffing glue because it is accessible and there are no laws prohibiting the sale of glue to children, according to Toorak Community Policing chairman Sudhir Patel. One suggestion from a Makoi advisory councillor is that parents must work with teachers; there is also felt to be an urgent need to carry out awareness programs on television and radio stations on the effects of glue sniffing.

MALAYSIA

Snuff out gluesniffing: It is “high” time the Government takes action against glue sniffing, says Malaysian Crime Prevention Foundation (MCPF) vice-chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye. Discussions are under way to formulate legislation to combat inhalant abuse, which includes glue sniffing.

VSA Headlines: June-July 2011

2011-07-21T14:10:00.075Z

Re-Solv has been concerned to follow the inquest into the death of fifteen-year-old Darlene Bell.

"An inquest into the death of a 15-year-old girl who died after inhaling butane gas from an aerosol while in care has been adjourned due to a "lack of clarification" over an investigation carried out after her death." (See the Belfast Telegraph, BBC, and UTV reports.)

Re-Solv's concern is that, despite previous solvent abuse, Ms Bell was not deemed to be at specific risk. It is an established fact that volatile substances when inhaled have the direct capacity to suddenly and unpredictably kill. They can kill on the first experimentation, or at any time. So any young person known to experiment with VSA is necessarily at risk.

"Coroner Joanne Donnelly delayed delivering her findings until she clarifies whether Darlene's care was properly reviewed by officials. "It is not a summary of the care we need, it is an analysis and an assessment of the care to see whether there are any lessons that can be learned," she told the Belfast inquest." (Belfast Telegraph)

Northern Ireland has the highest per capita rate of VSA deaths in the UK. It is to be hoped that this analysis and assessment of Miss Bell's death will initiate proposals to urgently address the problem of VSA at a national level.

Other UK stories

Cambridge engineers investigate propellant-free aerosols: A novel concept based around the use of superhydrophobic materials could lead to the development of propellant-free impact aerosols.

Coma drug in nail varnish remover: GBL, also widely used in paint stripper and rust remover, was freely available until it was classified as a dangerous drug. It was banned after Stephanie Balcarras, 22, and Hester Stewart, 21, were among those who died from taking it.

Marlborough teens in danger: Police are warning parents to be on the lookout for symptoms of a potentially deadly new craze among teenagers in Marlborough.

Addicts and solvent abusers take over children’s play area: Community leaders say Dee Park, off Bridge Street, Shotton, has been taken over by drinkers and drug users who leave smashed bottles, drugs paraphernalia and butane gas canisters, believed to have been used for solvent abuse, strewn across the field.

Off his internut: Hacking charge geek high on lighter gas.

USA

Teen Dies after Huffing Dust Cleaner (Sachse, TX): Friends and family members gathered in Sachse Wednesday night to remember a 17-year-old who died from “huffing.”

3 charged in inhalant death of 15-year-old Ardmore girl (Ardmore, OK): The teens are accused of encouraging the victim to inhale dust cleaner.

Teen Most Likely Died from Ecstacy and Nitrous Oxide Combo (Phoenix, AZ): Police are investigating the death of a Phoenix teen at a downtown rave party.

Student's death ruled an accident (Searcy, AR): The student unintentionally asphyxiated himself with a plastic trash bag. There were also at least two empty cans of aerosol duster, a computer cleaner, found in his room.

Mount Holly man gets 6 years in vehicular homicide (Mount Holly, PA): The night Jonathan Hinkson was killed by a driver high on marijuana and a huffing agent, his young daughter was waiting at home for him to tuck her into bed.

Law enforcement seeking huffing ordinance (Clay County, IA): "I can remember 20, maybe 25 years ago, when we saw some of this, but it seemed to go away. Now it seems to be back again".

Norwalk mother arrested for allegedly huffing in front of her kids at playground (Norwalk, OH): A trip to a Norwalk park ended with a mother in jail and her children taken away from her after police said the mom was huffing.

Huffing is keeping the EPD busy (Evansville, IN): It's not meth or marijuana that have Evansville Police busy these days, it's another drug that you buy right off store shelves.

Freon continues to be a problem for the US with stories this month from Fenton (MO) Thieves steal freon to get high, Swartz Creek (MI) Police: Suspect may be huffing coolant from A/C units, La Porte (IN) Man faces charges after huffing Freon, Salt Lake City (UT) ‘Freon huffing' on the rise, posing danger to teens, and Atlanta (GA) Poison Control Sees Surge In Freon Huffing.

CANADA

Ontario coroner takes in-depth look at spate of First Nations youth suicides: The "most troubling" factor at play in Pikangikum is the solvent abuse problem, the coroner's report said. More than one-quarter of girls in Grades 3 and 4 have self-reported sniffing gasoline.

Mourning death of solvent abuser: The truth is deaths related to solvent abuse are mostly unreported, even though many solvent inhalers end up in an accident that takes their life.

AUSTRALIA

Youth sniffed paint before suicide: The second day of the inquest into the suicides of a number of teenagers has heard one of the deceased youth was sniffing paint for several hours before his death.

Jail for glue sniffing arsonist (Lithgow, NSW): A glue sniffing addict who endangered a large number of lives when he lit a fire in a carriage on a Blue Mountains train has been sentenced to two years jail for arson.

Kids sniffing glue 'to curb hunger' (Bundaberg, QLD): Bundaberg children are continuing the deadly habit of glue sniffing because they are hungry, according to police.

Petrol sniffing 'outbreaks' hit Opal-free communities: Blair McFarland from the The Central Australian Youth Link Up Service says Opal fuel needs to be introduced into remote areas of the Northern Territory.

Skateboarders go bush on life skills mission: Dr Anna Flouris of the Central Australian Youth Link Up Service says it is part of a project designed to discourage children from taking up petrol sniffing.

FIJI

Decline in glue cases: Police have noted a decline in the number of cases involving school students who inhale glue fumes but there has been an increase in the number of street kids inhaling glue.

Minister rings alarm bells: Students as young as 10 years old are sniffing glue with most cases being reported from primary schools in the Suva-Nausori district, says Education Minister Filipe Bole.

INDIA

Drugs and the Valley (Kashmir): ”Out of the addiction cases that are reported at the hospital, school-going children comprise 15 to 20 per cent of that population; and 2 to 3 per cent are cases of solvent abuse.”

Kovai cops to crackdown on sale of whitener (Coimbatore): Following the arrest of two retailers on Wednesday, the Coimbatore police have planned to enforce the prohibition on selling whiteners to those under the age of 18, strictly in the city.

City teens fall prey to solvent abuse (Kolkata): If you think sniffing adhesive or ink whitener was the domain of the street urchins, you are thoroughly mistaken.

PAKISTAN

0.6 million Pakistanis joining drug club every year: Over 40,000 street children are involved in solvent substance abuse in four major cities of the country. An estimated 40% of Pakistan prison population uses drug.

Glue sniffing plagues Pakistan children (Islamabad): Hamza, 12, a poor beggar, is often found in different posh sectors of Pakistan's capital city Islamabad. Whenever there is a chance, he will steal money to buy a special kind of sniffing glue, which he uses as a drug.

ISRAEL

Youth charged with homicide for pushing friend off roof (Netanya): Some of the boys, including the defendant, began to inhale gas from the compressor of an air conditioning unit using a drinking straw and a plastic bottle.

WORLD NEWS

UNICEF focuses on the rights of indigenous children: A number of studies by UNICEF demonstrate high rates of suicide, alcohol, substance and solvent abuse among indigenous children.

VSA Headlines: April-May 2011

2011-05-23T14:35:00.075Z

The words of one mother, whose son died after becoming addicted to butane gas, are particularly resonant this month, following a number of deaths from VSA.

Quoted in the Derby Telegraph, Ms Evans called for the dangers of Volatile Substance Abuse (VSA) – the deliberate inhalation of volatile substances such as lighter fuel, glue or aerosols – to be widely publicised. She said: "After my son's death, I began to research the subject and I was astonished by how universal it is. Communities are often unaware of the consequences of VSA. The community needs to be aware of the services available to address this problem. More funding is needed to encourage practitioners to write about the subject."

Re-Solv's Helpline number is 01785 810762.

UK

Three people helped by teen who died after sniffing aerosol: A teenager whose Asperger's Syndrome led him to develop compulsive behaviour – including an obsession with smells – died after he sniffed an aerosol spray.

Misadventure verdict on chef: A chef who failed to turn up for work was found dead on his living room floor, clutching a butane gas canister, an inquest heard.

Family of Crewe teenager mark anniversary of his death by warning others of dangers of solvent abuse: Sports-mad teenager Robert Pownall was just 14 when he died after an experiment sniffing the fluid at his Crossway home one Saturday morning went wrong.

Paul Lupton was high on butane gas when he stalked his victim and attacked her: Neil Clark, Lupton’s barrister, said he was a butane gas addict who largely slept rough. He had scars from childhood beatings from his stepfather.

Gas-snorting heroin addict from Hatfield has ‘life’ sentence quashed: Heroin addict John Davidson Scott collected gas cylinders and kept them under his bed so he could get high from inhaling the fumes.

Arson accused 'sniffed' petrol: An alleged arsonist arrested after a car was set alight claimed he was carrying two suspected bottles of petrol to sniff, the High Court has heard.

USA

New national research by The Partnership at Drugfree.org and MetLife Foundation published 6/4/11 indicates that teen drug and alcohol use is headed in the wrong direction. With specific regard to VSA, their finding show that: "Past-year teen inhalant abuse remains at 10 percent, yet only 60 percent of teens strongly agree that 'sniffing or huffing things to get high can kill you,' significantly less than the 70 percent of teens who said the same in 2008. Inhalant abuse merits careful monitoring – as teen attitudes towards inhalant abuse weaken, abuse is more likely to increase." More.

A brand new awareness-raising campaign, Strike Out Inhalant Abuse, has been launched in the state of Minnesota. The Alliance for Consumer Education (ACE) has partnered with the Minnesota Twins and other community organizations, and local businesses have also joined the coalition to strengthen the impact of the campaign. Awareness and coalition-building efforts will continue throughout the year to help spread the message about the dangers of inhalant abuse and how to prevent it. Read more or watch a video clip.

Girl Who Died at Rave was Huffing Whip-Its: The 18 year old collapsed while attending a rave party at Madison Event Center in downtown Phoenix. Police say she had been inhaling nitrous oxide, and a toxicology test is pending to determine a cause of death.

Man Dies After Inhaling Refrigerant: A 25-year-old Ruston man has died after “huffing” freon, Lincoln Parish sheriff’s deputies said.

Judge orders mental evaluation: Weldon, 19, was charged with a number of offenses including the attempted murder of a Coffee County Sheriff’s Office deputy. During the hearing, Weldon’s parents testified their son is a former honor student who has developed an addiction to “huffing,” which is the cause of his changed behavior.

Reports concerning fatal crashes or critical injury caused by VSA were reported this month in Huntersville (NC), Mount Holly (NJ), Indiana (IN) and Rapid City (SD).

The story of repeat offender Kelly Gibson who is addicted to huffing made headlines in a number of UK papers as well as the US media. However, coverage was also given to his wife, Elizabeth, who spoke out tellingly on behalf of many who support someone addicted to VSA to say: “People need to understand that he is still a person. He is a person fighting with a very ugly addiction.”

CANADA

Shamattawa helped by no-sniff gas: An odourless gasoline made halfway across the globe has proven an effective weapon in a battle against solvent abuse on a Manitoba First Nation community.

AUSTRALIA

An interesting story ran this month that raised the issue of retailer responsibility and best practice. Youth workers in Central Australia had expressed concern that the supermarket giant Coles is inadvertently contributing to an inhalant abuse problem because of the in-store placement of misusable products. Coles has responded to say it is happy to move potential inhalants and is working proactively with Tangentyere Council to help reduce the inhalant flow into Alice Springs. An unrelated story but on the same topic from South Hedland makes the suggestion that displays could be "placed in areas where closer supervision can be made of the products themselves."

Youth workers warn of more petrol sniffing: Youth workers say the continuing availability of standard petrol in some areas of the Northern Territory is contributing to a sniffing outbreak at a Central Australian community.

INDIA

Govt to use nataks to deter kids from using intoxicants: The government plans to teach children the ill-effects of using intoxicants through stories, songs, slogans and group discussions.

PIL for steps to check inhalant abuse among children: Government and schools should be directed to take steps to check inhalant abuse among students, including making children and their parents aware of its harmful affects and preventing easy access to intoxicants, according to a petition submitted to the Delhi High Court.

Eraser fluid addict minor boys arrested for murder: Two minor boys have been arrested for planning and murdering another minor boy in Ghaziabad's Loni area. Police said both the accused are addicted to sniffing eraser fluid easily available in the market.

2011-03-28T10:36:00.021Z

VSA Headlines: March 2011

USA

The United States recognised National Inhalants & Poisons Awareness Week this month, an annual media-based, community-level program that takes place the third week in March. Organised by the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition (NIPC), the awareness week is designed to increase understanding about the use and risks of inhalant involvement (usually referred to in the UK as 'volatile substance abuse' or 'VSA') and garners widespread media attention.

This year, the week was also marked by the publication of a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in collaboration with the NIPC. It reports that 54% of U.S. treatment admissions for inhalant abuse in 2008 were those age 18 or older, and that an estimated 1.1 million adults age 18 and older used inhalants in the past year. (By contrast, estimated adult past year use levels for the following other substances were lower: Crack - 988,000, LSD - 637,000, Heroin - 571,000 and PCP - 75,000.)

The NIPC, with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), held a press conference on March 17 to discuss the public health problem of inhalant abuse by adults now illuminated by this disturbing new government data.

UK

So soon after VSA caused the death of a Belfast 12-year-old (reported in January), it's concerning to read The Belfast Telegraph again reporting that solvent abuse fear grows. Certainly, the annual UK report Trends in Death Associated with the Abuse of Volatile Substances, shows that Northern Ireland continues to have the highest VSA mortality rate in the UK.

AUSTRALIA

Our glue-sniffing epidemic shame (Bundaberg): Glue-sniffing is reaching epidemic proportions with children as young as 10 being caught in the act around the Bundaberg CBD, police say.

SINGAPORE

Teen was sniffing glue when he fell: State Coroner Imran Abdul Hamid found that there was no evidence to suggest foul play. He found that Shawn had drowned when he accidentally fell into the pond after ingesting toluene.

INDIA

Following The Times of India story of a young medical student suspected to have died following excessive inhalation of whitener, The Hindustan Times covered a number of stories this month: City students sniff ink for a high (Mumbai), and a series of articles based in Delhi: Fleeting highs and lifelong health woes, Delhi kids on a dangerous high and Addiction not limited to homeless youth.

SOUTH AFRICA

Teenager dies in 'huffing' incident (Johannesburg): The parents of a Sandton high school pupil who died after inhaling household aerosol to get high, are hoping that the news of his death will draw attention to the problem. Shannon Greenspans’ mother, Heidi, said since her son’s death on Saturday, she has realised how widespread "huffing" has become. “Many kids have come from many different schools to say Shannon has saved my life. It was almost like an epidemic,” she said. Read more.

2011-02-28T11:47:00.028Z

VSA Headlines: February 2011

Here in the UK, Mid Devon youngsters are putting their lives at risk by sniffing butane gas, police warned this week. A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall police said: “This is a very serious issue. “Youngsters should realise just how dangerous this practice is. I would call on all young people to be sensible and not give in to peer pressure to sniff gas or any other drugs. I would also call on retailers to think about who they are selling butane gas to.” Full story.

A similar problem with solvent abuse and petrol has also been reported in East Malling, Kent, while the jailing of a teenager in Oxford also highlights the association between VSA (in this instance, petrol) and criminal behaviour.

Other headlines this month from around the world include:

FRANCE

"Poppers" may cause lasting vision loss: Inhaling the vapors from "poppers" to get high even once can cause eye damage, but habitual huffing may lead to months-long vision loss, French doctors say.

USA

Tulsa mother warns of huffing freon after teenage son dies (Tulsa, OK): Despite her sadness, she feels it's important to warn parents how addictive and deadly a new high is that kids are chasing. Her son, Mario, died from huffing freon.

2010 brings coroner's first encounter with death by huffing (Washington Township, PA): A 16-year-old boy involved in a vehicle crash Sept. 19, 2010, died of inhalant abuse.

'Dusting' cited in fatal Granite City crash (IL): A Granite City man was under the influence of an inhaled gas when his car crashed into a building.

'Huffing' may be cause of death for Kimberly Andrews (Conway, AK): A 21 year old Conway woman was found dead in her home Sunday, and police believe her death may have been caused by "huffing."

A 53-year-old woman found dead along a road on the Wind River Indian Reservation (WY) died from heart troubles after inhaling fumes from an aerosol can, authorities say.

Woman failed to supervise paint-sniffing child (Palm Harbor, FL): Palm Harbor neighbors called police on Sunday after they saw a 7-year-old child huffing paint.

Local officials try to stop teens from 'huffing' (Leesburg, GA): Hairspray, nail polish remover and cooking spray; they're all items that you could find your home or a grocery store. They're also all items on a new list of substances that are banned from inhaling.

AUSTRALIA

Australia targets gasoline-sniffing (Canberra): Australia is fighting rampant gasoline-sniffing in the Outback by extending the availability of a less harmful fuel as part of a major campaign to improve Aborigines' health.

Youth warned of solvent abuse dangers: Yesterday, the Opposition criticised the Western Australian Government for knocking back legislation that would restrict the sale of the solvent butane to minors.

FIJI

Police in Fiji getting tough on glue sniffing: Police spokesman, Atunaisa Sokomuri, says the problem exists in urban areas and has been an on-going issue for sometime.

VIETNAM

Youth sniff chemical glue like addicts: Police of Quang Ngai Province and Da Nang city in central Vietnam have recently detected and apprehended some teens who sniff chemical glues as a drug.

INDIA

A sniff that can ‘white out' the future (Coimbatore): It's a case that has shocked people a 16-year-old boy was arrested on Saturday for brutally attacking his father with a stool, after inhaling rubber vulcanising solution. But this addiction is not a lone case.

PAKISTAN

Sindh Human Rights Minister Nadia Gabol calls for awareness against drug menace: Over 40,000 street children are involved in solvent substance abuse in five major cities including Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

2011-01-28T09:42:00.024Z

VSA Headlines: January 2011

A new year, a new goal to continue the downward trend in the number of deaths caused in the UK from volatile substance abuse. However, the tragic death of 12-year-old Correy Wisdom who did not know the dangers involved in petrol-sniffing, highlights once again the importance of preventative education. Re-Solv continues to campaign for young people to be responsibly taught the facts about VSA so that they can make informed choices.

UK

Petrol fumes killed west Belfast boy: A west Belfast schoolboy who collapsed and died in Falls Park last year had inhaled from a petrol can, an inquest into his death has heard.

USA

Huffing has tragic consequences for area family (Reidland, KY): Over the weekend, 15-year-old Mallory Chapman of Reidland, Kentucky, died after inhaling chemicals from computer keyboard cleaner.

Local student accused of helping another student get high from huffing (Chippewa Falls, WI): Charges are filed against a Chippewa Falls high school student. He's accused of helping another student get high from huffing at the school.

Wytheville Delegate tackles "dusting" problem (Wytheville, VA): Anne B. Crockett-Stark has proposed a law that would mandate retailers lock up those cans of "dust off" in order to make it harder to steal.

Traffic accidents caused by inhalation included those in Canandaiguia, NY, Fargo, ND, and Kearney, NB.

CANADA

Kids offered an alternative to drugs (Winnipeg): Skates or sniff? Chief Martin Owens was blunt Tuesday afternoon about some of the options youths in Little Grand Rapids might partake in.

AUSTRALIA

Opal fuel killing off petrol sniffing (Gunbalanya, West Arnhem Shire, Northern Territory): THE controversial rollout of Opal fuel in a Top End community has so far killed off its chronic petrol-sniffing problems and left the local substance diversion officer with little to do.

Group wants glue-sniffing legislation: An Alice Springs youth help group is pushing for new legislation to discourage glue-sniffing.

FIJI

Rehab centre curbs sniffing habit: Juveniles caught sniffing glue are rehabilitated by the Social Welfare Department in an effort to help control the habit.

'Trip into the day' (Suva): Glue sniffing is a scourge which some are encouraging by selling glue from their houses with prices doubling in the night.

Glue sniffers undergo counselling: Police have now taken to counselling more than 30 sex workers as glue sniffing is not a prescribed offence and the users can not be charged or brought before court.

SINGAPORE

Singapore Drug and Inhalant Abuse Situation 2010 Report: This new report, published 24/1/11, reported that the number of inhalant abusers arrested showed a decline last year, a trend noted since 2008. The total number of inhalant abusers arrested fell by 16 per cent, from 600 in 2009 to 504 last year. Arrests of new inhalant abusers also fell, by 14 per cent from 398 in 2009 to 343 last year.

2010-10-14T09:46:00.022Z

VSA Headlines: October

Opening in the US this month is the controversial film Samson and Delilah, written and directed by Warwick Thornton. If you missed it when it opened in the UK in March, it tells the story of, in the words of Germaine Greer: "an Aboriginal boy who sniffs petrol, and an Aboriginal girl who doesn't." You can read her full article, What a petrol-sniffing Aboriginal boy tells us about Australia today or watch the film's trailer here.

US

Crash that killed two may have been caused by "huffing" (Virginia): Blood tests determined that a Waynesboro man who caused a fatal May wreck on Interstate 64 — taking his life and killing a Tennessee man — was probably unconscious prior to the crash because of inhalant abuse.

Suspected 'huffer' caused crash that killed Pemberton father (New Jersey): A crash on Route 38 that killed a Pemberton Township father in March was caused by the other driver huffing aerosol propellant just before the accident, authorities said today.

As always, a host of driving accidents were reported, many involving teenagers, including one in Greenwood Arkansas and two in Chadron Nebraska, Harrisburg Pennsylvania.

AUSTRALIA

Kids turn to glue sniffing (Queensland): Young people unable to buy aerosols are turning to a popular clear sealant product to get high.

INDIA

Kids addicted to whitener sniffing (Kakinada): Apart from most deprived children living on the streets, even schoolchildren and college going students are said to be addicted to sniffing this liquid substance.

BHUTAN

Pot’s on top: Marijuana still remains the most abused controlled substance in Bhutan. However, they are seeing a decline in the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs and solvents.

Prince Harry N2O press release

2010-09-21T14:52:00.004Z

Re-Solv has released the following press release after reports that Prince Harry was spotted inhaling nitrous oxide.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1313471/Prince-Harry-gas-hippy-crack.html

PRESS RELEASE
21st September 2010

Last laugh for Prince Harry?

Prince Harry has been spotted inhaling laughing gas while partying in London. It’s seemingly no big deal: it’s legal, lots of people do it – does it matter?

“Yes,” says Stephen Ream, Director of national charity, Re-Solv. “Laughing gas – nitrous oxide – is one of a number of volatile substances that kill recreational users every year.”

In fact, in the last decade, volatile substance abuse (VSA) has killed more young people under the age of 15 than all illegal drugs combined. The problem is so great that the International Centre for Drug Policy (ICDP) at St George’s, University of London is commissioned to track the number of deaths and publish annually the report Trends in UK deaths associated with abuse of volatile substances.

Education and prevention work by organisations such as Re-Solv have led to a fall in the number of deaths, but VSA continues to be the most common form of drug use among 11-13 year-olds and second only to cannabis by the age of 15.

“It’s important to realise that ‘legal’ does not mean ‘safe’ when it comes to substance misuse,” says Ream. “It is unfortunate, then, when someone as influential as Prince Harry inadvertently promotes this kind of legal high.”

2010-09-20T10:41:00.050Z

VSA Headlines: August / September

The past week has been dominated by the story of Prince Harry inhaling nitrous oxide. Re-Solv's press release in response to the story is reprinted below this month's international headlines.

UK

Asthmatic died after inhaling 'poppers': A Weston man with chronic asthma died after inhaling 'poppers', an inquest heard.

Big fine after fuel sold to teenager (Kettering): A shopkeeper has been fined more than £900 after he admitted selling lighter fluid to a 14-year-old girl.

Action call after claims that drugs and glue sniffing are 'ruining' Churchdown (Gloucester): Residents have called for action after drug taking and glue sniffing in Churchdown.

USA

Father warns parents after son died from 'huffing (Gilbert, Arizona): It has been less than two weeks since he found his son dead, now a Gilbert father hopes others will learn from his son's fatal mistake.

Red Bluff teen was huffing before he drowned (Red Bluff, California): A Red Bluff teen who drowned last month was huffing while he was swimming, the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office reported today.

Tests show Nebraska boy died from inhaling gas fumes (Elm Creek, Nebraska): Toxicology tests show that a 12-year-old boy who died this summer in south-central Nebraska had inhaled gasoline fumes.

Boy's death caused by butane (Yigo, Guam): A teenager who was found dead in Yigo on Labor Day suffocated after inhaling butane in an attempt to get high, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Aurelio Espinola said yesterday.

Marshall man crashes his car after huffing (Wabash Valley, Illinois): While in route to Carle Hospital, Lake told emergency personnel he had been huffing.

SAFE recognized for reducing inhalant use (Chesterfield County, Virginia): In 2005, SAFE made it a priority to reduce the use of inhalants among young people. Armed with survey data from that year indicating that eighth-graders were using inhalants at twice the national average, the coalition developed an ambitious plan to educate the community about the then little-known issue.

Murphy touts passage of inhalant bill: Representative Charley Murphy hailed House passage of a bill which provides a critical treatment option to a growing number of Massachusetts families who suffer the destructive effects of inhalant abuse.

There have also been a range of arrests for huffing, including two separate instances in Texas where vulnerable children have been removed from the care of parents engaged in paint huffing. Stories of teens arrested for driving while inhaling came from Minnesota, Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, while a charge of manslaughter has been made against a teen in North Carolina. Finally, concern has been expressed by police in Indiana that minors are breaking into air conditioning units to huff freon.

Mexico

Mexico's poorest addicts turn to cheap inhalants: Despite the tons of narcotics moving through Mexico, inhalants remain the drug of choice for many Mexicans, offering a stark lesson in the economics of addiction even as the country wages a bloody battle against drug cartels.

Australia

Teen sniffer's lonely death: So brain-damaged by petrol sniffing, he could no longer talk, just grunt and stare glazed into the distance. The death of this young petrol sniffer in Western Australia has sparked calls for new laws that would force people into rehabilitation.

Rape accused inhaled solvents: A man who allegedly took a woman to a construction site in Perth's CBD and sexually assaulted her had inhaled some solvents, a court has heard.

Israel

Cousins die after inhaling laughing gas: The senseless deaths of two 18-year-old cousins after inhaling laughing gas from a stolen cylinder has shocked local communities in the Kiryat Malachi area.

Fiji
Government to control dangerous substance sale: Cabinet has approved the development of the Substance Abuse Decree to control the sale and supply of, legal but dangerous substances over shop counters.

Singapore

Singapore Reports Drug Seizures Up In First Half Of 2010: The inhalant abuse situation in the first half of 2010 registered an improvement compared to the same period last year.

India

Substance abuse high among ragpickers: HUBLI: Begging children and ragpickers here have now found a new way to be intoxicated -by inhaling Kores-Eraz-ex, a fluid used to erase/ whiten the mistakes on documents.

VSA Headlines: July / August

2010-08-31T13:36:00.011Z

Thank you for keeping in touch with Re-Solv where, this month, we are pleased to bring you news of the appointment of our new Director, Stephen Ream.

PRESS RELEASE
24/8/10

Stories surrounding legal highs may have provided shock headlines in recent months, but the issue is hardly new for Stephen Ream, recently appointed Director of national charity, Re-Solv.

“Re-Solv has been working in the drugs prevention field for 25 years, beginning with the glue-sniffing epidemic of the 1980s” says Ream, formerly Re-Solv’s Information Officer. “Today the biggest challenge is the misuse of aerosols, butane cigarette lighter refills and petrol. It’s known as ‘volatile substance abuse’ or ‘VSA’ and in the past decade alone, it has killed more young people under the age of 15 than all other illegal drugs combined.”

Thanks to years of preventative work, Re-Solv has played a major part in bringing down the number of deaths caused by this kind of legal high, but on average there is still a death a week in the UK. A father of four – and soon to be five - Ream says he is particularly concerned that Re-Solv helps raise awareness among young people about the risks involved in VSA. “Unlike other drugs, VSA can kill instantly and without warning, and there is no way to avoid this risk. Every year it kills young people who are trying VSA for the first time, and it kills people who engage in it regularly. You can think of it as a kind of Russian roulette.”

Last month’s NHS report into smoking, drinking and drug use among young people in England justifies Ream’s concerns. It confirms that when children aged 13 or younger first experiment with drugs, they are most likely to engage in VSA. Among the wider 11-15 year-old age group, VSA is second only to cannabis.

This is why, despite the tough economic climate for charities, Ream is confident that Re-Solv’s good work will continue. “We’ve weathered 25 years,” he smiles, “but, more importantly, there is still a great need for the kind of work we do. We may have started out as a charity combating glue-sniffing, but the landscape of legal drug misuse changes, and we’ve adapted with it.” [End]

VSA HEADLINES

Here in the UK we are saddened to hear of the death of another young girl from butane gas. 15-year-old Holly Fletcher died in Shildon, County Durham last September. Coroner Andrew Tweddle said: “If there is anything good to come from this then it might just trigger someone else’s mind to think that this is not a good idea." Holly's mother later issued a warning to other teenagers about the deadly effects of solvent abuse and urged them to stay away from drugs.

UK

Mum’s plea after 15-year-old dies sniffing lighter fuel: Bishop Auckland News. A mother whose teenage daughter died after inhaling lighter fuel last night warned other youngsters of the dangers posed by solvent abuse.

Inquest hears of mistake that cost Holly Fletcher her life: The Journal. A grieving mother last night spoke of her “wonderful, fun-loving daughter who made one tragic mistake”.

USA

Drowning ruled accidental, linked to inhaling aerosal product: Corning Observer (California). 19-year-old Sean Siders’ death has been ruled accidental although it also has been linked to his inhaling of an aerosol product not long before his death.

Man accused of huffing before buggy crash death: Wausau Daily Herald (Wisconsin). A 50-year-old man accused of inhaling from an aerosol can shortly before he crashed into an Amish buggy — killing an infant — was sentenced today to 3 1/2 years in prison.

Local Officials Behind New Huffing Law: WSIL TV (Southern Illinois). A new law backed by local legislators and prosecutors brings stiffer penalties to those who huff chemicals.

DUBAI

Substance abuse risk warning: Police and health workers yesterday issued a stark warning of the dangers of substance abuse after the death of a teenage boy at a party.

Dubai Police to crack down on butane abuse: An intensive campaign will be launched to curb this new problem in Dubai where minors are found to be inhaling lethal gas such as butane to get high.

VSA headlines - 2 more UK teenage deaths

2010-06-24T08:31:00.004Z

Thank you for keeping in touch with the headlines relating to VSA from around the world.

Here in the UK Re-Solv is dismayed to have to report two more volatile substance abuse deaths. 15-year-old Darlene Bell died in Newtownards in Northern Ireland on June 7th. Also, an inquest into the death of 16-year-old Zoe Ankers on Christmas day last year in Newcastle has resulted in the Coroner stating that VSA was 'the most likely explanation.' Please have a look at the articles in the links below.

UK

Girl found dead in Ards Belfast Telegraph A spokeswoman at FASA in Bangor said that solvent abuse is a huge killer. One in four people die across the UK after trying it for the first time.

Action urged over death of girl in care Irish Times She died of suspected solvent abuse, thought to be from an aerosol. A postmortem has been conducted. The health and social services trust, ...

Fostering giving many children "a friend for life" BBC News With the death of Darlene Bell - the fifteen-year-old from a care home who died from sniffing solvents in Newtownards - children being cared for by social

Burnley girl, 15, found dead in park Lancashire Telegraph... circumstances surrounding Darlene's death. Tributes have been left by friends at the scene of her death, which is suspected to be related to solvent abuse.

Xmas Day death of Newcastle teenager is a mystery ChronicleLive SOLVENT abuse was the most likely reason a girl of 16 collapsed and died hours after celebrating Christmas, an inquest heard. But exactly what happened in ...

Teenager banned from buying bicycle tire repair kit in case he sniffs the glue Telegraph.co.uk A teenager was refused a repair kit for a punctured bicycle tyre – because staff feared he might sniff the glue inside. Daniel Cottrell was shopping with ...

USA

Salem Man Dies in Apparent 'Huffing' Incident WJBD Online Marion County Deputy Coroner Roger Sutherland says a 38-year-old Salem man has died from apparently huffing from a can of duster used to clean dust from ...

Driver pleads guilty in crash that killed girl San Diego Union Tribune By Dana Littlefield, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER SAN DIEGO COURTS — A 34-year-old man accused of “huffing” vapors from an aerosol can and causing a crash ...

Suffolk Passes Bill to Curb Kids Huffing “Canned Air” Long Island Press By the time teens reach the 8th grade 1 in 5 has used inhalants at least once, ... “Sudden sniffing death (SSD) may result within minutes of inhalant abuse ...

'Don't ever do air duster while driving' Kansas City Star (blog) Huffing from an aerosol can while driving is a new one, though. A man in Highland, Ill., did just that, passed out and crashed into a building, police say. ...

Survey: 27 pct of Hemet 5th-graders drank alcohol San Jose Mercury News Among the other findings, 6 percent used an inhalant such as glue and 5 percent had smoked a cigarette. Nearly 1100 of the fifth-graders responded ...

Southern Illinois Woman Huffs Herself into Coma in Wal-Mart ... Associated Content According to inhalant.org, inhalant abuse is so prevalent that 2.1 million kids between the ages of 12 and 17 have used inhalants to get high. ...

India

White ink keeps addicts on a high Express Buzz Correction fluid inks, also known as whiteners, are now rapidly growing as an addictive inhalant among adolescents. The most dangerous complication that ...

Australia

Fuel ban 'won't help' ntnews.com.au A NUMBER of remote community residents say the banning of unleaded fuel won't fix a sniffing epidemic - just leave them stranded with no petrol.

Teens inhaling lighter fluid The Age He was amazed when about 20 young people staggered on to the Salvos' bus recently after inhaling butane. ''They were all falling over and became aggressive, ...

Petrol sniffing prompts call for local rehab centre ABC Message Stick The chairman of the Ngalia Foundation, Kado Muir, says, despite community efforts, there is still a significant petrol sniffing problem in Leonora. ...

Volatile Substance Abuse - In The News

2010-05-07T08:28:00.004Z

Hello again from Re-Solv and thanks for keeping up-to-date with current stories in the International press about VSA. We are saddened by the death of 16-year-old Rhianne Wake (see the first UK news story) in Sunderland from butane inhalation (aerosol). This tragic story highlights the continuing problems with VSA here in the UK and shows the desperate need for further education and awareness raising activity.

UK

Schoolgirl, 16, died after sniffing gas Sunderland Echo By Jane O'Neill Promising schoolgirl Rhianne Wake's life was cut tragically short after she experimented with sniffing gas from aerosols. ...

USA

Huffing kills McHenry County teen Chicago Tribune His parents said he had been huffing propane meant to fuel a lantern. He had the receipt for the canister in his pocket. By the time paramedics arrived, ...

Illinois lawmakers looking to stiffen penalties for huffing Bloomington Pantagraph Members of the Criminal Law Committee voted 8-0 to endorse a measure that takes aim at “huffing” — a practice in which paint and other chemicals are inhaled ...

Police: Teens were huffing before Charlotte fatal wreck Charlotte Observer The warrant says they had stolen cans of Dust Remover Spray from a nearby Wal-Mart and inhaled the spray, also known as huffing. They also smoked marijuana ...

In Sigel man's death, driver gets prison term for being under influence of ... Journal Gazette and Times-Courier SHELBYVILLE — A man pleaded guilty Wednesday to driving under the influence of an intoxicating compound, reportedly an inhalant, in connection with killing ...

Growing acceptance of marijuana ends up putting teens into rehab center Billings Gazette After marijuana, huffing “canned air” and taking someone else's prescription pills are the most common behaviors that lead kids to the recovery center. ...

ONLY ON 3: Police: Teen huffing before wrecking car WWAY NewsChannel 3 Sgt. Rob Miller says 19-year-old Randi Petrolino and two friends were huffing dust cleaner when they crossed the Wrightsville Beach draw bridge. ...

US Study Finds Teens With Asthma Just As Likely To 'Huff' NASDAQ Inhalant use, or "huffing," can cause breathing problems in otherwise healthy individuals, ... Inhalants are easily accessible and can be highly addictive. ...

Rapids man charged in crash that injured two passengers Wisconsin Rapids Tribune According to the criminal complaint, on Oct. 12, Adkins, who was 17 at the time, was with two friends, ages 15 and 17, when they started using an inhalant ...

'No going back' for recovering teen addict Muncie Star Press And then he started huffing, getting high by sniffing cans of air duster, hairspray, bleach, and finally, gasoline. After school he'd come home, ...

Inhalant Blamed in Ohio Crash TransWorldNews (press release) Inhalants affect a person by causing slurred speech, dizziness and red, glassy eyes, but they can be harder to detect because many inhalants do not have an ...

Man gets up to three months in prison for Millcreek explosion GoErie.com A Millcreek Township man has been sentenced to serve one to three months in the Erie County Prison for blowing up his home while huffing propane last summer ...

Australia

NT Govt failing petrol sniffers: Mills ABC Local... go back to his community on the condition he attends volatile substance rehabilitation, but only if space at the rehabilitation centre became available. ...

Ban to end sniffingntnews.com.auA TOP END community is set to succeed in banning unleaded petrol to stop people sniffing. Breaches of Gunbalanya's plan could see people fined up to $13000 ...

Saudi Arabia

Glue addiction on the rise Arab News Solvent abuse is gaining momentum in view of how cheap it is and its ... Solvent abuse is dangerous and users have in some cases died from a lack of oxygen, ...

Israel

Teen dies after sniffing glue with friends at youth village Ha'aretzBy Fadi Eyadat and Eli Ashkenazi A teenager was found dead in a Kiryat Tivon boarding school yesterday after apparently sniffing glue. ...

Malaysia

Filipino addict's last sniff Daily Express "He may have been sniffing glue before falling into the drain and drowned É but we have to wait for the hospital report before we can give any further ...

VSA news for March and April

2010-04-07T12:12:00.004Z

VSA news and opinions from around the world, including Germaine Greer on the Australian film Samson and Delilah.

UK

What a petrol-sniffing Aboriginal boy tells us about Australia today The Guardian It's a film about an Aboriginal boy who sniffs petrol, and an Aboriginal girl who doesn't. He loves her, as well as he can, given his usual state of ...

Young people risking their lives on solvents in Daventry Daventry Express Items including used aerosol cans, bags for sniffing solvents and evidence of people taking heroin were discovered on a path on Borough Hill. e Daventry ...

Lyme Regis: Police warn teenagers over 'legal' drug highs Bridport News Teenagers have been inhaling laughing gas – a legal drug – from small canisters, using balloons and plastic bags to cause hallucinations and euphoria. ...
USA

Woman pleads guilty to huffing near children Amarillo.com A woman accused of huffing aerosol hair spray in her vehicle while two children were in the back seat has pleaded guilty to two counts of endangering a ...

Tips for spotting 'huffing' Great Dad A recent study found that the use of sniffing common household chemicals, called "huffing," in order to get high is on the rise. Medical experts say some ...

Driver passes out at traffic light, arrested for 'huffing' behind the wheel in ... Daily Press While stopped at the light, several other motorists saw the man apparently "huffing" something from a can and saw him pass out behind the wheel, ...

Alliance For Consumer Education Will Take The Mound Against ... OurSports Central (press release) The latest national data reveals more 12-year olds are using inhalants than ... The "Striking Out Inhalant Abuse" program, now in its second year, ...

"Huffing" incident leads to charges Hastings Star Gazette At the time, police allege he was under the influence due to “huffing,” a practice of sniffing chemicals to get high. One of the passengers in the Usachev ...

Dangerous 'rite of passage' for teenagers Times Herald-Record While teenagers smoking marijuana or their nonmedical use of prescription drugs have drawn the most attention of late, inhaling common household products ...

Huffing May Be Cause Of Single-Car Crash Near Mansfield 10TV The National Inhalant Prevention Coalition said up to 125 deaths annually are blamed on inhalants, including aerosol cans. Inhaling fumes can cause brain ...

Police: Four students assaulted boy for promoting 'huffing' Columbus Local News (registration)Four students from Westerville South High School were arrested following an attack on another student they claim got others hooked on "huffing" Air Duster. ...

Canned addiction: Huffing isn't just a way kids get high anymore Naples Daily News Known as huffing, sniffing, bagging or dusting, experts say inhalants and other household products are most commonly abused by teenagers — 3.9 percent of ...

How To Launch A Nationwide Drug Menace Huffington Post (blog) Last week, the media was filled with headlines like "Sniffing Trumps Weed for 12 Year Olds," (CBS) and "Inhalant Abuse a Deadly Middle-School Concern," (US ...

Tama County moves toward outlawing 'huffing' DesMoines Register.com Tama County is moving ahead with an ordinance banning huffing, which involves inhaling everyday products from paint thinner to canned whipped cream to get ...

QATAR

Street children living on edge of addiction Gulf Times Furthermore, sheltering in the streets they are not safe because they are into smoking cigarettes, sniffing glue or dendrite that intoxicates them. ...

VSA in the headlines - March

2010-03-16T12:07:00.002Z

"...yet only 66 percent of teens report that "sniffing or huffing things to get high can kill you," significantly less than the 70 percent of teens who agreed just last year. Inhalant abuse merits careful monitoring – as attitudes towards inhalant abuse weaken, abuse is more likely to increase." - from a recent American national study.

UK

Girl brute 19, caged for 6 yrs The Sun Roxanne Preston, 19, had been boozing and inhaling aerosol gas before attacking office worker Paul Mullaney, 44, outside a takeaway. ...

Man stabbed victim to death over sex assault claim BBC News The court heard that Allen, from Glenarm Avenue, Portrush, had been high on drink, drugs and solvents when he carried out the killing. ...

Brighton and Hove children admit to drink and drugs The Argus.co.uk One in six youngsters questioned in a survey of Brighton and Hove pupils said they frequently abused alcohol, drugs or volatile substances, such as glue. ...

IRELAND

Independent group review of boy's 2003 death sought Irish Times THE GRANDMOTHER of a boy aged 16 who died after inhaling butane gas just 15 metres from the North Eastern Health Board children's home he was sent to live ...

USA

Cause for Concern: National Study Shows Reversal in Decade-Long Declines in ... PR Newswire (press release) Teen inhalant use remains steady at 10 percent for past year use, yet only 66 percent of teens report that "sniffing or huffing things to get high can kill ...

Huffing: an old danger rediscovered by youth Ottumwa Courier By MARK NEWMAN, Courier staff writer School-aged children across the country have rediscovered an old danger: “huffing” in certain chemicals causes a ...

Millcreek man pleads guilty to igniting house explosion GoErie.com A Millcreek Township man admitted this morning in Erie County Court that he blew up his home while huffing propane last summer. ...

The Deadly Drugs under Your Nose Officer.com His 14 year old son, Kyle, had died from the effects of inhaling the contents of a can of Dust-Off. His wife, Kathy, is a nurse. ...

'Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome' on the rise as young teens turn to inhalants ... New York Daily News Just one sniff of an inhalant can be enough to stop a teenager's heart - an event that's become known as “Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome. ...

Short Notice Picket The Drug Abuse Warning Network Medical Examiner stated that inhalant abuse contributed to more than 500 deaths in the US from '96 to '99. ...

Inhalant Abuse a Deadly Middle-School Concern BusinessWeek THURSDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News) -- More 12-year-olds have used inhalants to get high than marijuana, cocaine and hallucinogens combined, ...

AUSTRALIA

Petrol sniffing the target in Opal roll-out ABC Online The roll-out of Opal is intended to reduce the incidence of petrol sniffing in the region. (ABC News/Cathy Harper) The Federal Government has announced ...

ISRAEL

20% of 14-year-olds admit to inhaling industrial chemicals Jerusalem Post By YAAKOV LAPPIN Police are powerless to stop youths from inhaling industrial chemicals, and parents must be on the lookout for the signs of such “legal ...

SINGAPORE

Glue sniffer's death: Misadventure Straits Times Mr Sia Lian Heng's death from multi-organ failure syndrome due to heart failure was contributed by inhalant toluene abuse. The 34-year-old was arrested at ...

February VSA headlines

2010-02-17T12:16:00.003Z

Please take a few moments to read the headline VSA news for the last four weeks. These include an article about the death of a young mother in Cardiff; VSA concerns in Scotland; A speech delivered at Re-Solv's 25th anniversary celebrations; and a variety of news items from around the world.

UK

Cardiff mother, 15, died after inhaling lighter fluid BBC News A 15-year-old mother died after sniffing lighter fluid, an inquest in Cardiff has heard. Hasina Jenkins, from Gabalfa, Cardiff, had a heart attack after ...

Mum of lighter fluid death teen speaks out Wales Online And an inquest heard this week how she suffered a heart attack after inhaling lighter fluid in her boyfriend's home. Her heartbroken mum said she had no ...

Death speech touches MP Peterborough Today By Asha Mehta A HEART-RENDING speech made by a Peterborough man whose life was torn apart after losing his fun-loving son to solvent abuse 10 years ago is ...

Thieves raided flat hours after drug user died Stoke & Staffordshire Matthew Potts died at neighbour Christopher McKie's Chesterton flat after using heroin and butane gas, as well as drinking cider. ...

Eastwood pupils in the know about drugs Eastwood Advertiser The DARE project (Drugs, Abuse, Resistance, Education) is a ten-week course looking at the dangers of drugs, smoking, solvents and peer pressure. ...

Jogger raises concerns over Braes drivers sniffing gas The Paisley Daily Express IDIOTIC motorists are putting lives at risk by inhaling potentially deadly lighter gas and then getting behind the wheel in Paisley. ...

Drug addicts 'need a drop-in centre' Belfast Telegraph... Ards, Enniskillen, Banbridge and east Antrim have been identified. Over a fifth of youths, aged 11-16, have used illegal drugs or solvents.

Concern over solvent abuse at Fraserburgh Aberdeen Press and Journal He said: “Solvent abuse, no matter where it takes place, is a concern. “But it is especially disturbing when it's within school grounds, because they are ...

Kids see mum sniff 12 gas cans a day The Sun By LUCY CONNOLLY A PATHETIC mother has admitted sniffing 12 cans of lighter fuel A DAY in front of her distraught children. Jobless Sindy also inhaled ...

Ex-drug user shares his story on new blog The Star Mark, who grew up in Rossington, was aged just 10 when he started using solvents and within a year was smoking cannabis. Kicked out of two schools, ...

Group tackling teen solvent use. South Wales Evening Post A GROUP which helps teenagers with solvent abuse in the Gwendraeth Valley has been praised — but more still needs to be done. Children as young as 13 have ...

Republic of Ireland

Nearly 22% of Children Abuse Inhalants by 8th Grade eMaxHealth Within minutes of inhaling a substance, the user experiencs intoxication, similar to the feelings one gets when drinking alcohol. ...

USA

Illinois officials want harsher penalties for huffers Bloomington Pantagraph Williamson County Assistant State's Attorney Ryan Hall said he sees the same handful of people being caught by police for what is known as "huffing" -- a ...

Sheriff: Suspect in Willits casino arson under influence of solvent Santa Rosa Press Democrat Gerald Simpson, 40, was so intoxicated from apparently inhaling toluene that he could not answer questions or walk without assistance when deputies arrived ...

ACE Launches Multimedia Campaign to Support Inhalant.org and the ... Business Wire (press release) “Allison, her mother and her sister Sue all provide their heartfelt messages to parents and teenagers about the danger of inhalants and the hope for ...

Dothan wrongful death lawsuit set for April trial date Dothan Eagle Prosecutors convicted Farmer of the murder charge because she was under the influence of an inhalant after she'd apparently been “huffing” in the car. ...

Early drug use problems: Kids, inhalants, and huffing Psychology Today When it comes to drug use problems, inhalants are often the first drugs that young children decide to experiment with. The habit is often called huffing. ...

Grand Forks man pleads guilty to assault and huffing Grand Forks Herald Christopher Storey, 20, was given credit for time served and ordered to a year of supervised probation for huffing butane and assaulting his grandfather ...

Nearly 22% of Children Abuse Inhalants by 8th Grade eMaxHealth Within minutes of inhaling a substance, the user experiencs intoxication, similar to the feelings one gets when drinking alcohol. ...

Man gets 18-20 for fatal wreckCasper Star-Tribune OnlineBreazeale's then-girlfriend was in the pickup at the time and testified during his trial that he passed out after huffing one of the cans to get high in the ...

Australia

Petrol Laws Allow for Treatment of Dangerous Substance Abuse Problem TestCountry.com (blog)The Northern Territory Government approved changes to the Volatile Substance Abuse Prevention Act, which is aimed at identifying and treating young people ...

Girls caught sniffing deoderant Mackay Daily Mercury ONLY two days into the school year and three youths were caught sniffing deodorant in the City Heart. On Thursday one of Wallace and Wallace Lawyers partner ...

New Zealand

Petrol-sniffing child burned New Zealand Herald By Kara Segedin A petrol-sniffing 12-year-old was seriously injured and a woman is dead after two separate fires in Manukau last night. ...

Second death in 24 hours involving inhalants Otago Daily Times In a paper he co-wrote on the topic for The New Zealand Medical Journal, it was noted "inhalant abuse was a persisting problem in New Zealand". ...

Death in South Dunedin not suspicious Channel 9 It is believed the death of a young Dunedin man may have been the result of inhaling LPG gas last night with a group of friends. At about 12.10 this morning ...

Re-Solv 15% off resources sale!

2010-02-10T15:02:00.005Z

Re-Solv is offering a 15% reduction (25% to members) on all bulk orders over £100 on all our professional and educational resource materials and VSA training throughout February. This offer includes bestselling titles such as our YOUTH WORKER’S ACTIVITIES PACK, TOXIC AGENTS, and our popular CUPBOARD leaflet for parents and carers. Full information about all our publications is available at: http://www.re-solv.org/publications.asp.

If you are looking to replenish your stock of VSA materials, or are interested in booking professional training on volatile substance abuse, please take advantage of this offer by visiting http://www.re-solv.org/publications.asp, or contact our Information Officer, Steve Ream, directly on 01785 817885, or by email: information@re-solv.org.

Thank you!

VSA headlines from January

2010-01-19T09:16:00.004Z

Hello again from Re-Solv and thanks for staying up-to-date with the latest headlines from around the world involving incidences of volatile substance abuse. The first article details a tragic accidental death in Derbyshire involving a butane camping lamp, and the articles from the USA continue the steady stream of incidents involving people abusing aerosols whilst driving.

Thank you for your continued support.

UK

Warning leaflet call after gas lamp death The Star He was lying beside a portable Campingaz 'Lumostar' lamp, with an empty butane canister. The inquest heard the lamp's glass shade was fitted incorrectly and ...

Not enough people complain says trading standards chief Tewkesbury ADMAG NOT enough people in Worcestershire complain about illegal sales of alcohol, tobacco and solvents to youngsters, according to a trading standards chief. ...

USA

Police: Huffing can ruin lives Brainerd Daily Dispatch Commonly called huffing, inhalant abuse is the purposeful inhalation of chemical vapors to achieve an altered mental or physical state. ...

Alleged paint huffer arrested again MyABC50.com It's at least the fourth "huffing" arrest for 38 year old Kevin Bunke of Lyons Falls. Sheriff's deputies were called to Lyons Falls late New Year's eve by a ...

Riverside teen's death prompts helium warning Press-Enterprise The National Inhalant Prevention Coalition says on its Web site, www.inhalants.org, that inhaling, or huffing, any gas or volatile compound is like playing ...

Inform kids of dangers related to inhalants Jackson Clarion Ledger Did your conversation include the dangers of inhalants? In case the topic was omitted, it's worth a double-take. Inhalants come in a variety of forms ...

Macungie man nearly hits police car as he huffs fumes, officers say Allentown Morning Call A Macungie motorist nearly hit a police car as he huffed fumes from a can of dust remover while driving on a Lower Macungie Township road, police said. ...

Driver crashes through Chula Vista backyards San Diego Union Tribune CHULA VISTA — A driver suspected of huffing aerosol from a can crashed through two Chula Vista backyards Tuesday evening before coming to rest in a third, ...

Mom Who Huffed While Driving Stays In Jail WSMV A mother convicted of huffing cans of dust cleaner while driving her 6-year-old around west Nashville will remain in jail, despite her plea to be released ...

Closing arguments begin in death penalty trial Record-Searchlight Varner began “huffing” inhalants when he was only about 10 years old to escape from his bleak and troubled life, he said. “You are the last chance” to ...

APD officer accused of abusing inhalantKVUEby KVUE News An Austin police officer was placed on restrictive duty after he was arrested and charged with abuse of an inhalant. Officer Craig Martin was ...

Man apologizes for killing 83-year-old woman KHAS-TV Police said Martinez was huffing at the time. When asked if he had anything to say, Martinez said he did. He apologized to family members, ...

Crimetracker: The Dangers of "Dusting" ABC 4 Murdock has seen the grim results of teenagers “sniffing,” “huffing,” and “bagging,” all names for various ways users ingest household chemicals to get a ...

Canada

First Nation has history of violent deathsWinnipeg Free PressSuicides, solvent abuse and violence have dominated headlines about the remote northern reserve, a fly-in community on the north shore of Gods River, ...

New Zealand

Young addict locked up Taranaki Daily News The youth also had a solvent abuse habit, Mrs Yates said. The youth's lawyer, Patrick Mooney, said his client denied the arson. ...

VSA news in December

2009-12-23T12:07:00.002Z

The following are VSA new stories from around the world that have come to our attention in December. Thanks for taking some time to stay up to date with the current volatile substance abuse picture. Re-Solv wishes all of our Blog readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

UK

Drug users know their stuff EurekAlert (press release) Heroin, crack and cocaine topped the list in terms of harm, but alcohol was rated fifth, solvents seventh and tobacco ninth. Ecstasy came 13th in the harm

Ottery cannisters find sparks youngster gas safety fears Sidmouth Herald PC Thomas said internet sales make laws difficult to regulate, and while there is no "hard" evidence to suggest youngsters have been inhaling the gas, ...

My son died from solvent abuse guardian.co.uk - UK In 1988, Barbara Skinner's son Darren died, aged 16, after sniffing solvent from a can of deodorant. She tells Stuart Jeffries about her 20-year campaign to ...

Junkie beats heroin to mark a family Christmas Kent News While most children were out playing with their friends, Peter began dabbling in drugs and was addicted to solvents at the age of 12. ...

USA

Mom blames son's death on air freshener WBXH It also warns "intentional misuse by deliberately concentrating and inhaling the contents can be harmful or fatal." In response to this case, ...

Life Reinvented: Tribett Breaking Chains of Addiction Wheeling News Register That happened in the summer of 2005 when Bellaire police found Tribett inebriated from huffing spray paint. His mugshot, with the lower half of his face ...

Trial begins in Wyo. fatal crash Local News8.com... several lanes of traffic and hitting a car driven by 72-year-old Madeline Rakestraw head on, was huffing pressurized air before the March 15 crash. ...

GF man accused of puncturing stepfather's arm with drill Grand Forks Herald A Grand Forks man is accused of huffing butane and puncturing his stepfather's arm with the bit end of a portable Craftsman drill Tuesday. ...

Jury finds Breazeale guilty of vehicular homicide Casper Star-Tribune Online He denied huffing the Dust Off, however, saying that a pre-existing medical condition was to blame for him blacking out. A doctor testified to having ...

Man pleads guilty to huffing in accident that injured passenger Rapid City Journal A driver who hit two cars before his car finally stopped when it slammed into a tree has admitted inhaling dusting compound while he was driving. ...

Judge denies judgement in grocery store wrongful death lawsuit Dothan Eagle Farmer was charged with murder because she was under the influence of an inhalant after she'd apparently been “huffing” in the car. ...

Nebraskan pleads guilty to vehicular homicide Action 3 News Police say that before the accident on June 17, the 24-year-old Martinez had been getting high by inhaling compressed air from a can of Dust Off. Martinez's ...

'Huffing' Suspected in Teen's Death: Autopsy will determine if keyboard ...Behavioral Health Central (blog)"She must have been huffing," Gianna's father told police -- a reference to inhaling the fumes off a variety of household products to get a cheap, ...

Cleburne teen warns of 'dusting' danger WFAA Police said this appears to be just one case amid a flurry of incidents involving "dusting," the slang for inhaling compressed air designed to dust ...

Mom Seen Huffing With Kid In Car Gets Plea Deal WSMV Police said the boy's mother, Ashlie Hunter Braswell, was driving and huffing chemicals out of a can of dust destroyer. Mitchell ultimately forced Braswell ...

Teen Drug Use Survey Is 'Warning Sign' WebMD - USA The results from an annual survey of US teenagers show that previous declines in marijuana, alcohol, and inhalant use have largely leveled off over the past ...

Chronic 'Huffer' Admits Fatally Crushing Man WYFF4.com BOILING SPRINGS, SC -- A man who was convicted nearly two dozen times of paint huffing was sentenced Monday to 30 years in prison for a fatal attack on a ...

Delco. Woman Pleads Guilty In Fatal DUI Drash CBS 3 Jankins admits she was high on marijuana and huffing solvents at the time of the accident. Jankins pled guilty to the charges of Homicide by Vehicle While ...

Infamous paint-huffer turns his life aroundKansas City StarYou've almost certainly seen Patrick Tribett's mugshot -- he's the guy who got busted for huffing paint and, because of his now-famous booking photo

Former student found guilty Central Florida Future According to Riberdy, Barnes wasn't under the influence of alcohol but was high from huffing. Huffing is inhaling the contents from inside an aerosol can. ...

Man arrested, charged twice with huffing, DUI Newton Citizen The witness told deputies she went over to see if the driver was OK and noticed the driver was huffing on an aerosol can of computer keyboard cleaner. ...

Australia

Mackay kids sniff deadly cocktail Mackay Daily Mercury MACKAY youths are putting their lives at risk in a deadly new trend – sniffing deodorant. Police and community members have expressed great concern over the ...

Youth workers back petrol sniffing treatment laws ABC Online... to the Volatile Substance Abuse Prevention Act, which is aimed at identifying and treating young people who sniff substances like petrol and glue. ...

Kenya

Orphans continue a tough struggle on the streets BBC News Just off the main street running through the centre of Eldoret you will find an army of glue-sniffing street kids. Almost all the children have a small ...

Nepal

The children of Tridevi Marg York Weekly Day in and day out, the boys lay there, eyes rolled back into their heads, cheekbones protruding through their unwashed faces, huffing inhalants wrapped in ...

South Africa

Mom's frantic bid to revive son News24 Falcone's father, Frank, a former policeman, had apparently discovered him inhaling butane gas in his room a few months ago. "He had the look of a dead man ...

Philippines

QC moves to regulate rugby sale Manila Bulletin Aside from being eyesores, Councilor Dorothy Delarmente of the city's first district, said that mendicants and street urchins inhaling the elements have ...

Starweek Magazine Hope in a home called Tahanan Philippine Star - Manila, Philippines He says solvent abuse literally dries up one's brain. This is why he is keen on addressing the needs of streetchildren, even if they end up practically as ...

VSA news updates November

2009-11-20T16:30:00.002Z

Thanks for having a look at the recent headlines featuring VSA.

UK

Drug advisers depart as report shows Britain is drug hotspot The Edinburgh Journal - Edinburgh, Scotland, UK Solvent abuse, such as sniffing glue, inhaling gas from aerosols, is considered a “very hidden” issue by, Marina Clayton, Scotland's development manager for ...

USA

Vehicle searched in fatal crash Southwest Virginia Today - Richlands, VA, USA According to inhalant.org, a Web site dedicated to stopping the abuse of common household products, “the effects of inhaling can be severe. ...

22-year-old man found dead Livonia Observer - Livonia, MI, USA Livonia police are investigating whether the man used an inhalant prior to his death, but won't know until a medical examiner's report is completed in about ...

Texas resists family's effort to clear executed man CNN As a teenager, Todd had started huffing paint and dropped out of school. He'd been on probation for burglary, theft and driving under the influence and did ...

Teen Drives into Home After Allegedly "Huffing" WTVWA 17 year-old girl drove her car into a house and officials say a trend called "huffing" is to blame. It's not alcohol or drugs but rather a way for kids to ...

Garden City Police Concerned Over Kids "Huffing" KWCH Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome can affect a person who frequently uses inhalants, or is using inhalants for the first time.

Mom urges parents who suspect 'huffing' to seek help Sioux City Journal JIM LEE Kay Abbe, pictured during an interview, talks about her son, Daniel Boone, who died from huffing. (Journal photo Jim Lee) -- Empty spray paint or ...

Australia

Petrol sniffing 'wiped out' in Tennant Creek ABC Online By Kirsty Nancarrow Tennant Creek police say a petrol sniffing problem in the town has been wiped out as a result of agencies working together. ...

Canada

Equine program helps youth Sarnia Observer - Sarnia, ON, Canada In West Lorne, a large number of the kids attend an inhalant addiction centre outside London and have arrived from remote communities in the north. ...

More VSA headlines from around the world

2009-10-30T12:40:00.002Z

USA

Rapid City woman sentenced for huffing KTIVAP - October 27, 2009 9:35 AM ET RAPID CITY, SD (AP) - A woman has been ordered to jail for six months for huffing computer cleaner near her children in a ...

Mother charged with 'huffing' in front of baby Cookeville Herald Citizen ALGOOD -- A Cookeville woman is facing serious charges after being caught "snorting" a can of dust remover in the presence of her baby, police said. ...

Impact of huffing Emporia Gazette By Bobbi Mlynar (Contact) When Lora Esslinger Meirowsky's cell phone rang shortly before sunup on the morning of Oct. 20, 2008, she wasn't surprised. ...

Man Arrested for Huffing Gas in Wal-Mart Bathroom FOXNews Tulsa police have arrested a man for public intoxication after finding him "huffing" — or inhaling — compressed gas inside a Wal-Mart bathroom. ...

UPDATED: Two hospitilized after vehicle hits 5 cars, rolls twice Livingston Daily Inhalant abuse, also known as “huffing,” is the intentional inhalation of chemical vapors to attain a high. Bezotte said the two men had apparently ...

Australia

Hunter youths ditch alcohol for parents' pills Newcastle Herald - Newcastle, Australia... young people did not consider prescription medication abuse as problematic. ... incidents of groups

Governments accused of delaying Opal rolloutABC OnlineThe Uniting Church agency Uniting Care Wesley is warning that petrol sniffing will surge at Yalata, on South Australia's far west coast, ...

Malaysia

Bill On Glue Sniffing Submitted To AG Bernama KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 (Bernama) -- The draft Bill to make glue sniffing an offence has been sent to the Attorney-General's Department for perusal. ...

Malta

Sniffing your life awayMalta Independent OnlineTypical inhalant users are between the ages of nine and 17. In fact, the results of the latest International Report on the European School Survey Project on ...

September/October VSA news headlines

2009-10-09T08:50:00.005Z

Please take a moment to have a look at the VSA updates from the last three weeks. There have been three deaths mentioned in the UK press in this period, see the links below.

UK News

Cadet, 17, died after sniffing aerosol Scotsman A spokeswoman for the anti-solvent abuse charity Re-Solv said: "One of the main causes of death, the greatest risk of solvent abuse, is heart failure. ..

Girl, 18, killed by lighter gas The Sun - London, UK A spokesman for anti-solvent abuse charity Re-Solv said: "Solvent abuse is not a problem of the past". By MYRA PHILP A TRAGIC teenager collapsed and died ...

Bradford Coroner speaks out on the dangers of sniffing butane Bradford Telegraph Argus By Kathie Griffiths » A coroner has warned of the dangers of sniffing gas after a young mum died. Bradford coroner Roger Whittaker said if any good was to ...

Dicing with death North Wales Pioneer - Colwyn Bay, Wales, UK Insp. Andrew Broadhead of the West Conwy district said solvent abuse is not something ... According to national solvent abuse prevention charity, Re-solv...

Fears youngsters are sniffing aerosols in Llandudno Junction underpass North Wales Weekly News - Llandudno,Conwy,UKThe charity Re-Solv works closely with substance misuse action teams and school liaison officers in North Wales to highlight the dangers of sniffing ...

SOLVENT ABUSE FEARS HIT BALLYMONEY Ballymoney Times Said the inspector: "There has been some indication that a bit of solvent abuse or glue-sniffing is taking place in the town." He added: "It has been quite ...

Army cadet died after sniffing solvents guardian.co.uk An army cadet who was found dead in his bunk at a training camp was killed by sniffing solvents in his barracks, his death certificate has revealed. ...

USA News

Girl, 15, dies from 'dusting' Omak Okanogan County Chronicle The practice of inhaling dust remover products, known nationally as “dusting” and in general as “huffing,” has been widely reported by the US media since at ...

East Stroudsburg man died after huffing, coroner finds Pocono Record Huffing is the practice of intentionally abusing chemical inhalents, typically found in cleaning products, to attain a mental intoxication or euphoric ...

Police say woman who drove through Virginia Beach house was ... WTKR Your News Channel 3 Police charged the driver, Malia Lepley with driving under the influence of drugs. They say she was huffing a can of computer keyboard cleaner before and ...

Canton Teen's Hands Amputated After 'Huffing' Propane Hartford Courant Coppinger said that she had never heard of "huffing" — or inhaling — propane and wanted to alert parents and children so that no one else would suffer such ...

McComb mom wants charges in daughter's 2008 death WLBT-TV - Jackson, MS, USA The grieving mother blames the tragedy on inhalants, she claims the driver, ... She is on a mission to warn parents about the dangers of inhalants, ...

Huffer's Story A Warning Wheeling Intelligencer By GABE WELLS Staff Writer WHEELING - The time Patrick Tribett has spent in jail has apparently done nothing to ease his need to get high by huffing spray ...

Bettendorf strengthens huffing ordinance Quad City Times The chemical inhalation law, also known as the "huffing" ordinance, previously outlawed ingredients found in many household items, such as toluene or toluol ...

Suspect in 'huffing' crash waives hearing6abc.comOctober 7, 2009 (WPVI) -- The woman accused of causing a deadly crash after driving while huffing and smoking marijuana waived her prelminary hearing. ...

Police: Teen was huffing Dickinson Press A Dickinson teen who crashed into a power pole Tuesday and caused a power outage across much of the city had been huffing canned air when she blacked out, ...

Man faces charges after crashing into business KFVS According to authorities 23 year old Michael Shannon apparently passed out after possibly huffing dust remover. He then struck another car and crashed into ...

"Huffing" Drug Problem WJHG-TV Panama City Beach- Abusers choose huffing because it's cheap and the chemicals can be found in nearly every home. Huffing is one of the most dangerous forms ...

Cops: Hearing scheduled for 'huffing' driver accused in crash that ... PennLive.com By Matthew Kemeny The driver who police say was huffing from a Dust-Off can when she struck and killed a Lebanon Valley College student-athlete in a ...

Police say teens involved in crash were huffing Pocono Record A carload of huffing teenagers crashed in Hamilton Township on Thursday afternoon, according to Swiftwater State Police. While traveling, according to the ...

Mom raises alarm over inhalants Des Moines Register.com But since inhalants "in and of themselves are not illegal, there were no criminal charges to be had," he said. Southwoods Principal Kent Abrahamson said ...

Brunei

Inhalants New Drug Of Choice For Youngsters Bru Direct - Brunei Darussalam Picture: BT/Rachel Thien Bandar Seri Begawan - Inhalants are newly preferred drug substance abused by young people in the Sultanate as sniffing kangaroo ...

Australia

Man was sniffing paint, but he smelled fake fire Ipswich Queensland Times “He said there was no reason for making the calls other than that he'd been sniffing paint,” she said. Brown pleaded guilty to two charges of improper use ...

Call for petrol sniffing laws to tackle problem drinking ABC Online An alcohol control group in Alice Springs says problem drinking should be tackled the same way as petrol sniffing. The People's Alcohol Action Coalition ...

Teenager dies after 'sniffing lighter gas' with her friends

2009-10-06T08:30:00.002Z

A TEENAGE girl collapsed and died yesterday after apparently inhaling deadly lighter gas at a car park in East Lothian.
Kirsty Wilson, 18, was reportedly in a car with friends when she passed out sniffing the fumes from an aerosol.
Her distraught friends raced her to Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary – 25 minutes' drive away – but she died despite the best efforts of medics who battled to save her.
Last night, her heartbroken parents, sisters and brother were being comforted by friends.
Kirsty's grandmother, Helen Dunn, 69, reportedly said: "I don't know what happened yet. They're having a post-mortem. "The family is all together at her dad's house. I just don't know what to say."
Kirsty, who lived in Gilmerton, had gone for a drive with four teenage friends on Wednesday night. They stopped at Longniddry Bents car park on the coast. After reportedly inhaling the lethal gas, she was taken to A&E but lost her fight for life in the early hours of yesterday morning.
Last night, members of the family gathered at her dad Alexander's home. Kirsty's parents were divorced and she lived with mum Pauline, 50.
She is survived by older sisters Leanne, 28, and Laurie Wilson, 21, and younger sister Kayleigh, 15, and brother Daniel, 13.
Last night, shocked neighbours at her dad's home gathered in the street. One neighbour said: "We knew Kirsty. It's tragic." A spokesman for Lothian and Borders Police said: "There are no suspicious circumstances. A report will be sent to the procurator fiscal."
Scotland's record for deaths through volatile substance abuse was among the worst across the UK between 1995 and 2004, though by 2006 the number killed by solvents fell to an annual figure of just one.

By LAURA CUMMINGS

taken from The Edinburgh Evening News

More VSA Headlines - September

2009-09-16T13:43:00.004Z

Propane sniffing teens in Canada...New huffing laws in the US...
Dust-Off driving death in Philadelphia... More headlines from around the world about the impact of volatile substance abuse.

Bettendorf prepares to expand huffing ordinance Quad City Times Redington said the city decided to add "organic" to the law because they have heard of people huffing something known as "jenkem."

State police honor Clarion officer for drugged driving recognition Clarion News - Clarion, PA, USA... has the distinction of being only the second evaluation of more than 2000 in Pennsylvania in which an inhalant was called and confirmed by toxicology. ...

Propane-sniffing teens believed behind Sask. tank fire CBC.ca Propane-sniffing teenagers were probably responsible for a storage tank fire that erupted a week ago on a northern reserve, officials say. ...

Rescued man was sniffing paint, police say San Antonio Express By Eva Ruth Moravec - Express-News San Antonio police arrested a 50-year-old man suspected of sniffing spray paint from a beer can while San Antonio Fire ...

Cops: 'Huffing' cause of fatal Delco crash Philadelphia Daily News Upper Darby police Superintendent Michael Chitwood Sr. said yesterday that the toxicology results show that Jankins, 20, of Haverford, was huffing the ...

Over 100 treated at Stanley Express Buzz “We treated a three-year-old child who got addicted to sniffing petrol. The child had first accidentally sniffed petrol in a tank when his father was ...

Editorial: Horrors of huffing just don't go away Delaware County Daily Times Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said, “From the beginning of the investigation we thought she had been huffing. The bottom line is, ...

Volatile Substance Abuse - In the News

2009-09-04T09:01:00.000Z

More headlines from around the world featuring volatile substance abuse. Freon abuse in America, continuing problems with petrol abuse in Australia, the dangers of huffing whilst driving - Please spare a moment to catch up on the latest events.

Concern About New Drug Use The Bahama Journal "For the most part, coming out of the Family Island communities we have seen an increase in inhalant use particularly among our female students. ...

New Concerns Raised on the Dangers of Huffing Cleveland News - Fox 8 SOUTHINGTON, Ohio - The death of a local teen and serious injury to two more, is reminding us of the dangers of huffing, or inhaling chemicals from an ...

Freon may be the new high WFIE-TV A year ago, Ray Sforza learned about freon huffing from a heating and air conference and didn't think it would catch on with teens in Oakland City, ...

Liquor bans linked to petrol sniffing rise ABC Online There are fears petrol sniffing has again taken hold in Western Australia's east Kimberley since the Government introduced alcohol bans in Halls Creek. ...

POLICE: Teens Found Unconscious in Traffic, High on Inhalants WSAZ-TV Officers believe they were both huffing inhalants. Police also found Oxycodone pills in Duff's pocket. Officers also noticed that Duff's car matched the ...

Deadly sniff Fiji Daily Post Glue sniffing may have slipped down the list of worries for parents but it is a bigger killer for teenagers than hard drugs warns experts. ...

August VSA headlines from around the world

2009-08-21T09:17:00.003Z

Re-Solv's periodic look at the global VSA situation, including the first links highlighting a new radio campaign in Scotland advised by Re-Solv's Scottish office.

Campaign launched to combat solvent abuseAberdeen Press and JournalThe “Not To Be Sniffed At” initiative aims to inform parents about the dangers of volatile substance abuse and to encourage them to talk to their children ...

Substance abuse dangers highlighted stv.tv The dangers of volatile substance abuse (VSA) amongst youngsters are being highlighted by a new health campaign. The 'Not to be Sniffed at' campaign, ...

Boy treated after huffing Port Clinton News Herald YORK TOWNSHIP -- A Township boy was treated at Bellevue Hospital on Thursday after huffing dye, authorities said. The 17-year-boy could face unruly juvenile ...

Arrest for the Supply of a Volatile Substance – Alice Springs Australia.TO A man will face court later this month on charges of supplying a volatile substance to three teenagers in Alice Springs. Police received a report just after ...

'Huffing' air leads to charges Moultrie Observer MOULTRIE — A Moultrie man was arrested after he allegedly crossed over North Veterans Parkway while “huffing” compressed air Tuesday afternoon. ...

Overall drug abuse down but heroin abuse increases Channel News Asia - Singapore As for inhalant abuse in Singapore, which includes glue sniffing, the situation remained the same. Latest numbers showed 344 cases so far this year, ...

Police: Unlicensed Teen Driver Crashes After 'Dusting' TheDenver Channel.com She said they had been "dusting," which is the recreational practice of inhaling compressed chemicals to cut off oxygen flow to the brain, creating a mild ...

Son's death motivates woman to try and save others Business Gazette - Gaithersburg, MD, USA by Laura C. Jackson Special to The Gazette Mitchellville resident Janna Zuber's son died after taking an inhalant seven years ago. ...

Area woman in trouble with the law again for huffing WQOW TV News 18Eau Claire (WQOW) -- An area woman is in trouble with the law again for her addiction to huffing. Last week, authorities found Lisa Waggoner-Roberts of ...

'I've been sniffing it since I was 7' Indian Express He is edgy as he talks: “I've been sniffing it since I was seven or eight.” Vijay's father is a rickshaw puller; his mother died some years ago. ...

Teen admits huffing before fatal crash WFMJ One of the survivors of that crash, Kaylynn Barko, tells the Ohio Highway Patrol that just prior to the crash Manchester was huffing, using an aerosol can. ...

Tasered Homeless Man Catches on Fire CBS News - New York, NY, USA From the look of him and with substance abuse, no wonder he's homeless. ... placed restrictions on the sale of some solvent-containing products to minors, ...

Raid police find jumbo drug stash The Sun - London, UK A GRIEVING mum yesterday warned parents to be on their guard after shocking figures revealed Scotland has Britain's highest number of solvent abuse deaths. ...

Taser use near flammable materials limited Lancaster Eagle Gazette Adam Pillar said huffing dangerous materials is not uncommon in Lancaster. "It's usually kids that don't have access to any other type of drug," Pillar said ...

Re-Solv news roundup - VSA headlines for July

2009-08-03T08:57:00.002Z

In the news - More headlines from around the world detailing the tragic consequences of volatile substance abuse. Following the recent report from St George's University London which indicated that VSA deaths, particularly amongst adults, are rising, the following stories highlight the problem in more detail. Please spare a moment and take a look.

Govt considers petrol sniffing advice ABC Online - Australia... will consider a recommendation from a Senate inquiry to help encourage remote roadhouses to sell Opal fuel in a bid to curtail petrol sniffing. ...

Burnley drug addict (24) dies after sniffing butane gas Burnley Express - East Lancashire, UK A BURNLEY man receiving help for a drug problem died at home after taking an accidental overdose, an inquest heard. Mr Steven Gorton (24), of Lyndhurst Road ...

Police say woman was huffing while driving before crash FOX 21 Online - Duluth, MN, USA They suspect she had been huffing--inhaling compressed air from an air duster product, causing her to pass out off and on, all the while driving west on ...

Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment ... Uptown - Winnipeg, MB, Canada The seemingly perennial problem of solvent abuse is in the news once again, with reports this past week that H1N1-plagued Manitoba First Nations communities ...

'Huffing,' reckless driving contributed to Pierre teen's death ... Sioux Falls Argus Leader - Sioux Falls, SD, USA PIERRE - Huffing an inhalant, reckless driving and failing to wear a seat belt all were contributing factors in a crash that killed a Pierre teenager, ...

11000 addicted children get help Metro - London, UK There were also 22 under-12s who were treated for solvent abuse. Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb described the figures as horrific. ...

Huffing charge faced airman before accusation of killing Indianapolis Star - United States By Jason Thomas An airman from Greenwood who police say shot and killed his girlfriend in California last weekend was charged with huffing while on ...

Police suspect boy was huffing before disturbance phillyBurbs.com - Philadelphia, PA, USA Police tracked the boy and a 21-year-old man to the condo after receiving a call that several people were "huffing" balloons in the area of Tulip Road and ...

Huffing Incident Illuminates Deadly Habit KETV.com - Omaha, NE, USA A Lincoln teenager who passed out in a grocery store restroom after huffing compressed air from a canister of dust remover was a recent reminder of the ...

Coroner: Woman likely died from huffing air freshener The Herald-Times Bloomington, IN, USA But Piper said items found at the scene point to a huffing-related death. “All the signs were present for a huffing overdose. ...

Father's solvent abuse campaign - Peterborough Today Re-solv will celebrate its 25th anniversary later this year, and Mr Cullington will use his experience to help teach and support parents and youngsters affected by solvent abuse. Chris died after suffering a heart attack after inhaling ...

Australian engulfed in flames after being TaseredThe Associated PressSYDNEY — A man whose relatives say had been sniffing gasoline burst into flames after a police officer Tasered him as he ran at officials carrying a ...See all stories on this topic

WA today Man set on fire by police TaserWA todayThe man has been charged with assault to prevent arrest and possession of a sniffing substance while the 18-year-old woman has been charged with two counts ...

Man catches on fire after use of Taser Sydney Morning Herald A man caught alight after police used a Taser on him as they responded to reports of petrol sniffing in a remote desert community in Western Australia. ...

Sex Assault Arrest in Morgan Co. WAAY She told police she thought McGinnis had been huffing gasoline before the attack. McGinnis was arrested without incident at his home. ...

4 kids rescued from fumes in Dallas motel; parents accused of ... Dallas Morning News - Dallas, TX, USA By STEVE THOMPSON / The Dallas Morning News A man and woman are accused of sniffing paint thinner in a far northeast Dallas motel suite as fumes filled the ...

Father appeals to young people after daughter's aerosol death Belfast Telegraph - United Kingdom... recommends that adrenaline should not be used or should be avoided in (cardiac) arrest situations where there is evidence of volatile substance abuse. ...

Two teenagers dead after sniffing aerosols Belfast Telegraph - United Kingdom Mrs Peake said she had caught her daughter sniffing nail polish two years earlier at the age of 14 with a friend and had “taken the head off her” for it. ...

PRIVATE DWYER'S LAST BREATH Ethiopian Review - Washington, DC, USA He knew huffing was dangerous: Within seconds of even the first hit, Dust-Off can cause cardiac arrest. Which is why, at first, the soldier kept his habit ...

Woman arrested after 'huffing,' passing out in front of officers Sarasota Herald-Tribune MANATEE COUNTY - A Bradenton woman was arrested after she was found passed out in a pharmacy parking lot after huffing from an air can, the Bradenton Police ...

Man charged with 'huffing' inside store Lancaster Newspapers By RYAN ROBINSON, Staff Writer A New Providence man faces charges after police say he huffed nitrous oxide from 20 cans of whipped cream inside a ...

New St George's VSA report released

2009-07-29T13:07:00.003Z

58 deaths from VSA in 2007

St George's University of London has released the 22nd annual Trends in deaths associated with volatile substances 1971-2007 report.
The report, which was compiled for the Department of Health, monitors trends in deaths associated with the misuse of gas fuels, aerosols, glues, anaesthetic agents and other solvent based products.
There were 58 deaths associated with volatile substance abuse in 2007, compared with
51 deaths in 2006, bringing the total number of VSA deaths in the UK since 1971 to
2,308.
In 2007, butane from all sources accounted for 46 of the 58 deaths and of these butane cigarette lighter refills formed the largest group. Three deaths in 2007 were attributed to asphyxia (a condition of deficient supply of oxygen to the body) associated with the inhalation of nitrous oxide (more commonly known as ‘laughing gas’).
Among under 18s there were seven deaths resulting from volatile substance misuse in 2007 - a similar number to the previous two years.

Other key findings include:

Since 1992, there has been an overall decline in the number of deaths from volatile substance abuse. There was an average of 76 per year in 1993-1999, but this fell to an average of 56 per year in 2000-2007;
For twenty year olds and over there was an increase in 2007 to 48 deaths, the highest number recorded to date for this age-group;
Gas fuels continue to be associated with the majority of deaths. In 2007, butane from all sources, including aerosol propellants, accounted for almost 80% of VSA deaths (46 of the 58 deaths).

Recorded deaths were generally sudden and in 2007 were five times more common in males than females. Of the 58 deaths in 2007, nine were suicides involving the inhalation of a volatile substance. The report found that for both adults and children, volatile substance abuse which led to death usually took place in the home.

The reason that figures from 2007 are being published now is due to a necessary delay of more than twelve months between the end of a calendar year and publication of the VSA report. This is to allow time for data to become available from HM Coroners and from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and the General Register Offices for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Download VSA Report 22: Trends in Death Associated with Abuse of Volatile Substances 1971-2007

VSA News from June

2009-06-29T09:29:00.002Z

Hello again, and thanks for taking a few moments to have a look at more headlines from around the world featuring volatile substance abuse.

Teens OK after huffing carbon dioxide
KTAK - Riverton, WY, USA They were huffing Dust-Off. That means they were inhaling carbon dioxide from the can of a cleaner used to remove dust from computers...

Police: Man found in mechanic's shop died "huffing" freon
Lufkin Daily News - Lufkin, TX, USA By JESSICA COOLEY A man found dead inside a mechanic shop Monday morning had apparently been inhaling freon, a substance abuse process known as "huffing. ...

Oenpelli tackles petrol sniffing problem
ABC Online - AustraliaShire chief executive, Mark Griffioen, says the community is meeting to decide on a proposed volatile substance abuse management plan that includes the ...

Playing Russian roulette: Officials say inhalant abuse poses ...
Lufkin Daily News - Lufkin, TX, USA By JESSICA COOLEY Earlier this week a Lufkin man found dead with a trash bag over his head apparently after "huffing" Freon became one of 125 ...

Fargo man sentenced for downtown accident
In-Forum - Fargo, ND, USA Ronald Eugene Willis told police he was huffing dust remover before the accident, according to Cass County District Court documents. ...

Girl, 14, dies after sniffing aerosol can
The West Australian - Perth, Western Australia, Australia A Kununurra girl has died in hospital four days after being found unconscious from sniffing aerosol fumes. Kununurra Acting Sen. ...

Aerosol-related deaths uncommon: Police
ABC Online - Australia Police in Western Australia say aerosol sniffing is not common in the Kimberley region, despite the death of a girl from Kununurra on the weekend. ...

Dangers of Huffing
NTV - Kearney, NE, USA Stalker said it's often kids who seek help for huffing. "A lot of them are even 12, not even teens yet or younger when they start this and then they'll move ...

BBFC announces new guidelines
Digital Spy - UK The board has tightened the 12/12A categories with regards to horror and crude sexual references, while solvent abuse has been specified as a classification ...

Burnley man died after sniffing butane gas
Lancashire Telegraph - Blackburn, England, UK But Mr Gorton, 25, of Lyndhurst Road, returned to sniffing butane shortly before his death on February 19. His mother Carol Duckworth told the inquest that ...

GI man faces motor vehicle homicide charges
KHAS-TV - Hastings, NE, USA(6/23/2009) By Anthony Pura - Investigators in Grand Island believe a man may have been "Huffing" when he crashed his truck killing an elderly woman. ...

Midcoast prevention success gains national attention
VillageSoup Belfast - Belfast,ME,USAInhalant abuse in the Midcoast has become a critical issue – according to the 2006 ... Of those teens who die each year from inhalants, 40 percent die...

Lawmaker: Ban 'Whippets' Sales To Minors
KCRA.com - Sacramento, CA, USA The inhalant has shown to cause death from cardiac arrest or asphyxiation and has been tied to Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome, according to a news...

Petrol sniffer's death at home raises alarm
The Australian - Sydney, New South Wales, Australia His parents, Elijah and Daisy, say Alfaus was weak from the effects of petrol sniffing, a habit they believed he had kicked. Others around Gunbalanya ...

One out of every 10 students is a drug addict
The News International - Karachi, Pakistan Over 40000 street children are involved in solvent substance abuse in merely four major cities of the country namely Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and the twin ...

Petrol sniffing: plan to punish roadhouses
ABC Online - Australia The Senate committee report has identified 10 sites in and around the region covered by the Government's petrol sniffing strategy that do not stock Opal ...

New petrol sniffing scare
The West Australian - Perth, Western Australia, Australia He said yesterday his Halls Creek counselling service was called in last month to help deal with an outbreak of sniffing by a group aged nine to 13. ...

Crime Branch holds seminar on World Anti-Narcotics Day
Rising Kashmir - Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India “Consumption of cannabis and volatile substances like correction fluid is alarming which is often found among young school children,” the findings reveal. ...

Burglar next door jailed for 2 years
Cambridge Evening News - Cambridge, England, UK James Earle, defending for Payne, said he had an "unhappy history of care and a fragmented family", adding that he had been involved in solvent abuse from ...

Street urchins sniffing glue
The Daily Star - Dhaka, Bangladesh Rag picker Badsha who is not even a teenager, sniffs glue on the railway lines in Karwan Bazar in the capital while a few other children do the same not far ...

VSA News updates from around the world

2009-06-17T09:28:00.002Z

Missing freon in Norfolk, Virginia...Dust Off huffing death in California...glue sniffing in Lincolnshire...

Just some of the news items involving volatile substance abuse over the last few weeks. VSA continues to cause suffering across all areas of society around the world.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at some of these stories.

Freon removed from AC units at Va. Beach apartment complex
WVEC.com (subscription) - Norfolk, VA, USA Air conditioning experts say the Freon could have been taken and used for huffing. If you know anything about these cases, call Crime Solvers at ...

Teens Are 'Huffing' to Get High
KYW1060.com - Philadelphia, PA, USA Another major issue is a problem called huffing. This has rapidly become a popular method for teens to get high but there are many dangers, including brain ...

Teen in debt commits suicide
Straits Times - Singapore By Elena Chong & Jessica Lim AN 18-YEAR-OLD school dropout, in debt from sports betting, fell 13 floors to his death after sniffing glue with his friend. ...

Coroner: Cal State students death was due to huffing
Bakersfield Californian - Bakersfield, CA, USA A huffing death at Cal State Bakersfield has revived a publicly dormant issue in Kern County. Coroner officials confirmed Friday that the March 27 death of ...

Driver crashes three times
Gary Post Tribune - Gary, IN, USA Marshall allegedly told police he had been at a home on Evans Avenue where at least six people were huffing dust remover. He denied huffing it himself but ...

Glue sniffing puts play areas out of bounds
Market Rasen Today - Market Rasen, England, UK GLUE sniffing and other drug abuse in Market Rasen is affecting small children is has emerged, by leaving play areas unusable and out of bounds. ...

Petrol sniffing linked to crime in Oenpelli
ABC Online - Australia The Darwin Magistrates Court has heard a culture of petrol sniffing and property crime has grown amongst young people in a remote Northern Territory ...

Volatile substance abuse news from May 2009

2009-06-01T12:37:00.002Z

Please take a moment to have a look at these recent links to news items featuring volatile substance abuse.

Service station praised for curbing petrol sniffing
ABC Online - Australia The Central Australian Youth Link-Up Service has congratulated a remote service station on its response to petrol sniffing at a nearby Aboriginal community. ...

Review of The Unloved
Communitycare.co.uk - Sutton, UK Life in the children's home is harsh and Morton does not flinch from showing sexual abuse, violence and solvent misuse. Morton admits she was inspired by ...

Whip-its, no laughing matter
Petoskey News-Review - Petoskey, MI, USA “Nitrous oxide is not a safe inhalant when it is not being administered by medical ... “Huffing any of the commonly abused inhalants can cause sudden death. ...

Rapid City Mother Facing Child Abuse Charges
KOTA - Rapid City, SD, USA A Rapid City woman is facing felony child abuse charges for huffing computer cleaner near her three young children. Marcella Dubray was arrested last month ...

North Myrtle Beach man charged with tampering with AC units ...
Myrtle Beach Sun News - Myrtle Beach, SC, USA A 28-year-old man was arrested for tampering with AC units and huffing freon from them days after his roommate reported him missing, according to a North ...

Family Talks Of Teen's Tragic Huffing Death
WSOCtv.com - Charlotte, NC, USA Cooper said Moree later admitted huffing gasoline for a cheap, quick high. She immediately took him to counseling. Two weeks later, he spent the night at ...

Kidnap Suspect Has History Of Huffing
WTVC - Chattanooga, TN, USA We researched Jeremy Mizell's past and learned of his addiction to huffing gasoline. Mizell remains in jail with a one million dollar bond, charged with ...

Warning after Huddersfield man dies sniffing lighter fuel
Huddersfield Examiner - Huddersfield, UK A CORONER has warned of the dangers of inhaling lighter fuel after hearing how butane gas claimed the life of a Huddersfield man. An inquest heard how Adam ...

Cause of woman's death released
Valley Sun - La Cañada Flintridge, CA, USA Cans of compressed gas is often used in inhalant abuse, or huffing. It is the purposeful inhalation of chemical vapors to achieve an altered mental or ...

Cause for concern: Drug, substance abuse catching them younger in city
Expressindia.com - New Delhi, India It's very difficult to quote an exact figure pertaining to the number of total cases, but substance abuse, mostly sniffing correction/white fluid and ...

Jail inmates caught with paint thinner in Eagle County
Vail Daily News - Vail, CO, USA Four inmates confessed to sniffing the paint thinner to get high, police said. The inside of the detention facility was being painted at the time of the ...

Employment opportunities with Re-Solv

2009-05-20T13:53:00.005Z

Re-Solv – The Society for the Prevention of Solvent and
Volatile Substance Abuse

Re-Solv has the following two employment opportunities available:

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT OFFICER

The post is initially for 2 years

An extension will depend on availability of funding.

Applicants will preferably have relevant strategic management
and demonstrable training delivery. Driving licence essential.

Location : Nottingham
Salary : £19,000 per annum
Closing date : 1st June 2009
Interviews will take place on 11th June 2009

PROJECT COORDINATOR
for Scotland

21 hours per week (hours to be agreed)
The post is initially for 2 years
with a possible 3rd year extension

Applicants will preferably have project management experience
and a knowledge of the substance misuse field in Scotland.

Location : Lothian
Salary : £19,500 per annum pro rata
Closing date : 8th June 2009
Interviews will take place 16th June 2009

For further details regarding either of these posts please send an email to:
office@re-solv.org
or ring 01785 817885

VSA news from around the world

2009-05-06T11:08:00.002Z

Please see the links below to global VSA news stories from the last two weeks. Petrol sniffing issues in Australia, glue sniffing in Malaysia and VSA influenced crime in the USA - Volatile substance abuse continues to cause untold amounts of grief and suffering. Just have a look at the first story on the list, about a mother in Scotland who lost her son to aerosol abuse...

Mum warns parents of danger after son dies from sniffing aerosol
Glasgow Sunday Mail - UK - A GRIEVING mum whose son died from sniffing an aerosol has warned parents about the killer lurking in their cupboards. Elaine Dorans lost Scott, 22, ...

Isa substance sniffing worries welfare groups
ABC Online - Australia By Penny Timms - Welfare groups are concerned about the number of young people sniffing volatile substances in Mount Isa in north-west Queensland. ...

CAP: Make glue sniffing an offence
New Straits Times - Persekutuan, Malaysia GEORGE TOWN - The Consumers' Association of Penang has called on the government to make glue sniffing an offence. Its president SM Mohamed Idris said this ...

Man Accused Of Beating, Burning Woman And Kids
WBAL TV - Baltimore, MD, USA - There was evidence that he had been huffing gasoline, Melser reported. Sickle and her children were taken to Carroll Hospital Center with ...

Teens ill after sniffing lpg
Otago Daily Times - Dunedin, New Zealand By Glenn Conway on Sat, 25 Apr 2009 - Police in Balclutha say two young people were lucky not to have died after sniffing liquefied petroleum gas (lpg) ...

Robeson County deputies investigate two bodies found over the weekend
South Carolina Now - South Carolina, USA - Branch says he died from huffing butane gas from cigarette lighters. But the death is ruled “accidental.“ On Sunday, investigators responded to a call about ...

Authorities Catch Woman Allegedly Stealing, Huffing
NBC4i.com - Columbus, OH, USA - A city prosecutor says a Gahanna woman accused of stealing cans of gas duster or canned air was huffing while she was shoplifting the items. ...

Teen inhalant abuse prevention urged
Examiner.com - USA - A new study of teen inhalant abuse suggests a need for more prevention and treatment efforts, showing that nearly 1 million youth in the US used some kind ...

Solvent death alert for 'first timers'
Leigh Today - Leigh, England, UK - Anyone thinking about abusing solvents or who knows of any young person who is thinking about or has already abused volatile substances, should ring the ...

Sask. man jailed after third manslaughter conviction
Calgary Herald - AB, Canada - By age nine he was sniffing solvents. Four years later, he had stopped sniffing and started pulling break-ins. He had his first manslaughter conviction at ...

Director puts petrol sniffing centre stage
The West Australian - Perth, Western Australia, Australia - A low-budget film highlighting the effects of petrol sniffing on Aboriginal communities looks set to reach an international audience after getting rave ...

Solvent abuse on the rise in Wigan

2009-05-05T08:33:00.003Z

01 May 2009

Solvent abuse among Wigan teenagers is rising alarmingly.
And worried substance abuse workers say young people – most of them between 11 and 16 – seem unaware that even first time users are at risk of instant death from inhaling solvents.
Sniffing gases, glues or aerosols kills at least one person every week in the UK, and in Wigan the number of referrals and requests for information about Volatile Substance Abuse (VSA) has risen significantly this month.
Substance abuse workers in the borough are now trying to raise the public's awareness of the potentially lethal practice.
The substances are commonly found in the home and include aerosols containing deodorants, hairspray, air fresheners, gas lighter refills, cleaning fluids, tins or tubes of glue, surgical spirit, certain paints and thinners, dry cleaning fluids and petroleum products.
Due to the ready availability and low cost of these products, young people are a group particularly at risk from the dangers of abusing the substances.
Siobhan Heaton, manager of Wigan Council's Young People's Drug and Alcohol Team (YPDAT) team, said: "Young people need to be aware that there is no safe way of abusing solvents, even first time users are at risk of instant death from using them. There is no safe way to do it."
Death can occur due to heart failure and from choking on vomit, and also due to accidents when high or hallucinating."
It is vital that children and young people understand the serious risks involved with abusing solvents."

By Andrew Cooney on wigantoday.net

In the News - week ending 27th March, 2009

2009-03-31T08:13:00.002Z

The following news stories about solvent and volatile substance abuse were brought to our attention last week. If you have a story that you would like to report please let me know at information@re-solv.org.

NT petrol sniffing rehab centre under threat ABC Online - Australia ELIZABETH JACKSON: Petrol sniffing and substance abuse has been killing and injuring young people across the Northern Territory for decades. ...

Boy drowns after sniffing glue - police Independent Online - Cape Town, South Africa A 16-year-old boy drowned in a dam near the old Leslie prison in Mpumalanga shortly after allegedly sniffing glue, police said on Thursday. ...

YOUTH FIRST COLUMN: Availability of inhalants makes abuse a problem Henderson Gleaner - Henderson, KY, USA No one knows how many people are dying from inhalant abuse every year, but we know millions use inhalants, particularly young people...

Huffing: Expert Ways in on the Seriousness of its Effects State Journal - Charleston, WV, USA MCMECHEN -- The man known throughout the Ohio Valley as the "Serial Huffer" has apparently done it again. Patrick Tribbett, 44, whose paint-stained face has ...

News items for week ending 20th March, 2009

2009-03-23T14:15:00.002Z

As part of a new initiative to keep you up to date with all the news stories involving volatile substance abuse (VSA) that come our way, we are introducing a weekly blog entry of condensed stories. These items come from all over and highlight the degree to which VSA remains a serious problem in many communities around the world.

Hampstead woman has long history of 'huffing' Eagle Tribune - North Andover, MA, USA
By James A. Kimble SALEM, NH — A Hampstead, NH, woman arrested in Methuen this week on charges of inhaling compressed air fumes while at a red light has a ...

Officials Push Ban on Sale of Whipped Cream Chargers to Minors Bell Gardens Sun - Los Angeles, CA,USA
Los Angeles students can also expect to start seeing public service announcements on the dangers of “huffing” or inhaling fumes from common household ...

New Australian fuel 'cuts abuse' BBC News - UKA newly developed fuel has successfully reduced petrol-sniffing in Aboriginal communities in Australia's central desert region, a Senate committee said. ...

Senators say new Australian fuel reduces sniffingThe Associated Press CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A newly developed fuel has almost wiped out gasoline-sniffing among Aborigines in Australia's central desert and should be made ...

Abuse report: Teens sniffing inhalants iTWire - Australia by William Atkins Although a lower percentage of US teens are sniffing, or huffing, inhalants in 2007, the number of teenagers who have abused inhalants has ...

Brothers Accused Of ‘Huffing’ in Parking Lot Wheeling Intelligencer - Wheeling, WV, USA Officers said the mother of the boys, Alicia Huntsman, claimed she came out of the store to find the pair "huffing" from cans of Century Duster, ...

Woman Puts Children in Danger to Huff Paint WTAJ - Altoona, PA, USA BROCKWAY, JEFFERSON COUNTY - A woman has been found guilty of child endangerment for huffing paint. Anjanette Pifer was huffing paint while her two children ...

Parents, Study Finds Inhalant Use Among Teens Down - New York, NY, USA
In 2007, almost 1.0 million adolescents used inhalants in the past year; this represents 3.9 percent of adolescents, which was lower than the rate in 2003, ...

Do you know signs of inhalant abuse? VillageSoup Belfast - ME, USA AUGUSTA (March 18): The key message of National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week, March 15-21: Parents need to know the warning signs of inhalant abuse ...

Belton man looking at fourth charge for huffing paint Anderson Independent Mail - Anderson, SC, USA According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, adolescents and adults do huffing or inhaling various cleaning or painting-related products to get high or ...

Study shows: First drug kids use often found in homes Talk Radio News Service - Washington, DC, USA Today marks the beginning of the 17th annual National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week. The National Inhalant Prevention Coalition (NIPC) held a press ...

Calls to widen program preventing petrol sniffingABC Online - AustraliaHealth officials say petrol sniffing can lead to brain damage, disability and even death. In 2005 the Federal Government began subsidising the low-aromatic ...

2009-02-23T09:49:00.002Z

He is one of Preston's most notorious criminals – but 'Toxic Terry' is fast developing a cult following.
Terrence Ashcroft is known throughout Preston for drinking petrol and sniffing lighter fluid, as well as accidentally setting himself on fire.

The 36-year-old is homeless and is currently serving a four-month jail term for breaching his ASBO ... yet also has an online fan club with almost 3,000 members.

A group called the Toxic Terry Fan Club has been formed on social networking site Facebook to chronicle his troubled life.

Under his ASBO he was prohibited from having any petroleum or solvents, as well as from making 999 calls other than in an emergency, and from using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

The site features various pictures of Terry with his 'friends', including some of him recovering in hospital.

It also contains spoof tubs of Toxic Terry Adhesive as well as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The site's message board has been flooded with stories about him as well as messages of support.

One said: "He'll be happy enough inside until April/May when they let him out."

We'll all miss him but it's probably the best place for him in this weather. He's just as famous in prison though as he is on the streets – as soon as he goes in everyone wants to see the legend in the flesh."

Another reads: "Hope Terry has a good hol – won't be long before he is out enjoying himself again."

But Steve Lambert, director of volatile substance abuse charity Re-Solv, said his problems are a "tragedy" which should not be celebrated.

He said: "I think that rather than looking up to this person they should be saying this is the tragedy of a life destroyed."

The message should be about what solvents can do to you. It is a tragedy, but this is the consequence of volatile substance abuse."

Mr Lambert added that, on average, solvent abuse claims the life of one person every week in the United Kingdom.

In 2004 hundreds of leaflets were distributed in Preston city centre to alert people to the terms of an ASBO which Ashcroft had received.

by Ben Robinson in the Lancashire Evening Post

‘Schoolgirl was inhaling aerosols before she died’

2009-01-22T13:04:00.003Z

Witness tells trial of Naomi’s last hours

A 14-YEAR-OLD girl who was found dead in a North-east house was inhaling aerosols on the night she died, a court heard today.
A girl witness who cannot be named, told the court how Naomi Thomson was one of three girls who consumed four bottles of alcopops.
She was today giving evidence at the trial in Peterhead Sheriff Court of Amanda Williamson and Christine Stewart who deny allowing Naomi to take part in a booze binge.

The pair are alleged to have allowed three underage girls – including 14-year-old Naomi Thomson – to binge on alcohol.
Naomi, of Saltoun Place, Fraserburgh, was discovered dead in a Fraserburgh house.
It is alleged the youngster was left “moaning” and “gurgling” and without the proper medical care.
Procurator Fiscal Sandy Hutchison asked the girl witness what the three girls including Naomi had been drinking and where they got the alcohol from.
She said that a bottle of WKD had been given to her by Stewart and that Williamson had provided another.
Williamson also gave the girls permission to drink two further bottles of alcopop from her fridge. Mr Hutchison asked the girl if anything else might have affected Naomi.
She replied: “She was inhaling aerosols.”
She said heard she had inhaled them through a towel in a bathroom.
The court earlier heard the schoolgirl said she was paid with alcopops instead of cash for doing a household chore for Williamson.
The girl agreed to help her in exchange for two bottles of blue WKD.
Williamson, of 34 Watermill Road, and Stewart of 2 Marconi Terrace both Fraserburgh, are alleged to have had three teenage girls including Naomi in their care on November 18 and 19, 2006 and allowed them to drink alcohol.
The charge further alleges Stewart, 49, failed to care for Naomi while she was staying at her home and failed to realise the teenager was intoxicated with alcohol and get the necessary medical help.

The trial continues.

By Lynn Kernan in The Evening Express

Study finds Irish schoolchildren aged 10 are sniffing glue

2009-01-08T12:24:00.002Z

By Eilish O'Regan Health Correspondent
Wednesday January 07 2009

A small number of children, some aged as young as 10, have admitted sniffing glue, according to a new study.
The extent of experimentation with glue and solvents among primary school children is a source of concern given its potentially lethal consequences, the research warned.
The study, which involved 1,254 children in 43 schools, found that 4.2pc admitted having abused glue or solvents "at least once or twice".
The children surveyed in Limerick, Clare and north Tipperary ranged in age from 10-14 years and were split between fifth and sixth class.
It found that 1pc reported they had used cannabis, the authors, from Limerick Institute of Technology and the Department of Public Health in the HSE West, said.
"Only two respondents reported having used cannabis more than once or twice," the 'Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine' said.
More than eight in 10 said they had heard of cannabis, but 16.2pc said they had not.
The report said that seven in 10 reported they had ever taken alcohol, even if it was only a sip. However, only 10.8pc reported having consumed a whole alcoholic drink.
"When asked whether they had ever had so much alcohol they were drunk, 6pc admitting to having been drunk."
taken from Independent.ie

95% of Kathmandu street children sniff glue

2009-01-05T14:13:00.002Z

KATHMANDU, Jan 2 - With the onset of winter, it is usual for people to buy warm clothes and heaters to warm up their rooms and snuggle up in the quilt till late morning.
However, looking at skimpily dressed street children, you may wonder how they survive the freezing cold of Kathmandu. But they have their own
way of keeping warm: they sniff dendrite.
Bibek Moktan, 12, who hails from Hetauda, warms up his winter morning by blowing into and inhaling from a plastic bag containing dendrite.
"I sniff one tube (50 grams) of dendrite a day," said Moktan. "When I first tried sniffing, I felt a current flowing inside me, but slowly I got used to it."
Kale Pariyar, 15, from Kalimati, was also sniffing from a dirty plastic with glue inside it. "I sniff, because I want to enjoy as others do,"said Pariyar.
Bibek and Kale are not the only ones who sniff glue to keep warm and to be happy. There are hundreds of children on the streets of the capital addicted to glue despite various health hazards associated with it.
According to a research conducted by Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN), glue sniffing affects various organs including the brain, nervous system, eyes, blood, lungs and heart and even causes death.
However, the number of glue sniffers has gone up dramatically not only on the streets of the capital but also in other urban areas.
According to a CWIN survey, around 95 percent of 1,200 street children in the capital sniff glue, whereas there were only 51.7 percent street children who sniffed in 2002.
Director of Voice of Children, an non-governmental organisation, Krishna Thapa said, "Street children suffer various psychological problems in society before they end up on the streets. They think sniffing glue empowers them to face any vulnerable situation on the street."
Director Thapa also said, "Dendrite is easily accessible in both hardware shops and from street vendors at a very cheap price."
"We have seen street vendors selling small packets of dendrite targeting other street children. But we have no authority to take legal action against them." "The government does not have any legal agency to discourage such acts."
"Until and unless the government builds a strong mechanism to control the sale of glue; and until all organisations working for children ally to create pressure on the government, the problems will not be solved," said Sanu Giri, Programme Officer at CWIN.

Taken from Kantipur.com

REMINDER: Volatile Substance Abuse – we want your vie

2008-12-02T14:09:00.002Z

Dear Colleague

We recently sent you an email asking for your help with a questionnaire about volatile substance abuse (the deliberate inhalation of volatile products such as glues gases and aerosols to achieve intoxication).

We have had a good response so far – and if you have already completed the questionnaire, my apologies for troubling you, please ignore this email.

If you have overlooked the previous email, I would be very grateful if you would take a just few minutes to answer the online questionnaire. Please follow this link, which will take you to the questionnaire, and follow the instructions there:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=gqTqhsDNSS1FBntywsaSog_3d_3d

Thank you very much for your response. Your help will be very valuable to Re-Solv in planning their future work.

If you want to discuss this evaluation or ask any questions, then please get in touch with me.

With my thanks and best wishes

Richard Ives

educari

With a grant from the Big Lottery, Re-Solv, the UK charity concerned with VSA, is investigating professionals’ views on VSA so that the organisation can help you to in your work. educari is carrying out this evaluation for Re-Solv. Your responses are confidential. We will not reveal individual identifiable responses to Re-Solv. This is an independent evaluation and we operate according to ethical guidelines.

US show Intervention features inhalant abuser

2008-11-19T09:17:00.006Z

She was a pre-med student on her way to becoming a surgeon, but the trauma of being molested as a child and her parents' brutal divorce haunted Allison. She started to inhale computer dust remover, which is potentially fatal with each breath. Her erratic behavior and absence from classes got Allison dropped from the pre-med program. Allison is currently inhaling up to ten cans of dust remover a day. Can interventionist Jeff help Allison and her family?

To watch this programme on YouTube, click the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufOFzKT5v1Q.

Volatile Substance Abuse – we want your views

2008-11-19T09:15:00.000Z

Dear Colleague

Re-Solv is the UK charity concerned with volatile substance abuse (the deliberate inhalation of volatile products such as glues gases and aerosols to achieve intoxication).

With a grant from the Big Lottery, Re-Solv is investigating professionals’ views on VSA so that the organisation can help you to in your work.

As an independent research company, we are helping Re-Solv with this task. You can help us, by completing an on-line questionnaire – which will only take you a few minutes.

We would be very grateful if you would take a just few minutes to answer this questionnaire. Please follow this link, which will take you to the questionnaire, and follow the instructions there:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=gqTqhsDNSS1FBntywsaSog_3d_3d

Your responses are confidential. We will not reveal individual identifiable responses to Re-Solv.

Thank you very much for your response. Your help will be very valuable to Re-Solv in planning their future work.

If you want to discuss this evaluation or ask any questions then please get in touch with me.

With my thanks

Richard Ives

educari

educari is carrying out this evaluation for Re-Solv. This is an independent evaluation and we operate according to ethical guidelines.

Michigan huffing death

2008-11-03T11:50:00.002Z

IONIA, Michigan (WOOD) -- After her son's death, apparently from huffing or inhaling a computer dusting spray, Beverly Helms started researching.
She wanted to know more about what Michael Meek had done -- and what it did to him.
Some of what she found makes her worry others are learning exactly how to make the same mistake. Countless online videos capture teenagers and adults huffing.
"There were even a couple of moms spraying it in the face of little toddlers," Helms told 24 Hour News 8.
She registered with one Web site to try and reach the people who posted the videos.
"Just to say this is what happened my little boy," she said. "A 9- or 10-year-old looks at that and thinks, 'It's not going to hurt me,' and they become another statistic."
The statistics are sad. The National Inhalant Prevention Coalition estimates as many as 125 people die from huffing across the country every year. Even one use can kill, damaging the heart, brains and lungs.

Helms found her son, Michael, slouched at the end of his bed one morning in September.
"They found a can of computer duster under his hand," she said.
And so many teens expose themselves to that risk. The 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health concludes roughly 10 percent of US teenagers have huffed in their lifetimes.
"I just want parents to be aware," Helms said.
Aware, she says, because her son wasn't into other drugs or alcohol. His friends told her he always said no thanks. But something made him think huffing would be safe.
And Helms is worried online videos could convey the same false message.
"I think it's absolutely scary and ridiculous that they can even keep them on there," she said. "I would like to see them off."
The Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America called on one online video site -- YouTube -- to take huffing videos down. The group says it worked when enough members filed complaints. A group spokeswoman said she believes if moms like Helms find new videos and complain, they too could succeed in getting the videos removed.
Meek was known around town for his love of skateboarding.

taken from woodtv.com

US Teen Pleads Guilty After Crash Injured Friends

2008-09-26T08:39:00.002Z

SPARTANBURG COUNTY, S.C. -- An Upstate teenager is headed to prison after pleading guilty to two counts of DUI resulting in great bodily injury, but alcohol was not involved.
Heather Hewitt was accused of crashing her car after huffing keyboard cleaner, Spartanburg County police said.
Five friends were passengers in the car that Hewitt was driving, and two of them were critically injured, police said.
Prosecutors said Maranda Poteat will never see through her left eye, and Jamie Maxwell, who suffered a traumatic brain injury, can't talk and is only semi-conscious.
Both girls were passengers in the Toyota Camry Hewitt was driving on a Sunday in September 2007.
"She cannot feed herself. She cannot take care of herself," Maxwell's mother, Pam Maxwell, told the judge.
She said her family is left with almost $700,000 in medical bills so far, and she said she wants Hewitt to be held responsible.
"I don't hate her," Maxwell said "I feel sorry for her because she doesn't value life."
Hewitt entered an Alford plea of guilty, which is an admission that she could be proven guilty in a trial.
Hoping for leniency, her attorneys said she is also a victim because one of her friends in that car gave her the keyboard duster.
Half the courtroom was filled with supporters of Hewitt, and they spoke to the judge about her character, saying she never set out to do any harm.
"She regrets everything that happened every day," Hewitt's boyfriend, Josh Robinson, told the judge.
Sentenced under the Youthful Offender Act, Hewitt will be turned over to the state Department of Corrections and will serve up to six years.
"This has been extremely difficult for her. It's not something she planned on or wanted to happen. It was unfortunate, and we're sad for all involved," Hewitt's third cousin said.
"I wish we could send a message to folks: Any kind of inhalant, drugs or alcohol -- they need to know what ramifications they have," Spartanburg County Principal Deputy Solicitor Barry Barnette said.
The defense brought up questions over whether the duster should actually be considered a drug and whether it meets the statute for felony DUI.
Barnette said this may be the first case of its kind in South Carolina, and his office will prosecute any case like this in the future, he said.

taken from Fox Carolina

‘Excessive aerosol use’ caused girls' house blast

2008-08-12T12:43:00.002Z

AN EXPLOSION which left four teenage girls critically ill in hospital for several weeks was caused by the “excessive use of a large number of aerosol deodorants”, an official inquiry will announce today.
A joint investigation was launched by Dyfed-Powys Police and Mid and West Wales Fire Service after the fire, which blew the roof off a terraced house in Llanelli on December 17.
A file was also submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, who have decided there is insufficient evidence to prosecute anyone for causing the fire.
But an action plan will now be launched to warn young people of the dangers of aerosols.
Sisters Anya, 15, and Kira Evans, 14, and Kimberly Patterson, 15, and Nadine Fardon, 14, were severely burnt when the fire tore through the sisters’ home in Old Castle Road.
Stunned neighbours reported at the time how the girls ran screaming into the street after the explosion which closed the entire road.
The teenagers spent weeks in intensive care, underwent 10 major skin graft operations – some of which lasted up to a day at a time – had surgery to their hands, arms and legs and were treated for burns on their faces.
They received occupational therapy and physiotherapy, and psychologists were on hand to offer emotional support to the teenagers and their families.
They were also put on special diets, while doctors said it is likely they will need further operations in the future and will continue to be treated on an outpatient basis until they are 18 or 19.
The girls were unable to walk for more than a month after the accident, and Kimberley’s mother, Katrina, told how she burst into tears when she saw her daughter walk again.
“I wasn’t expecting it and I started crying – I was overwhelmed,” she said.
They were gradually eased back into their lessons at Coedcae Comprehensive School and volunteers in Llanelli raised thousands of pounds towards a fund for the girls and their families.
In a joint statement released today, Dyfed-Powys Police and the fire service said: “The investigation concluded that the cause of the fire was as a result of the excessive use of a large number of aerosol deodorants in a confined space being accidentally ignited.
“The use of the aerosols led to the accumulation of flammable gas and vapours in a bedroom without sufficient ventilation.
“The ignition source was a cigarette lighter.
“Following a full investigation, Dyfed-Powys Police submitted a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service.
“The CPS has instructed that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute any person.
“Dyfed-Powys Police and Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service would like to warn people of the dangers of aerosols.
“We are working together with local agencies in a bid to prevent this type of tragic incident from happening in the future.
“Educating young people about the dangers and potential consequences of inappropriate use of aerosols will form part of future community safety education programmes.
“The four girls have now been released from hospital. Their families have asked the media to respect their privacy.”
Mark James, chair of the Carmarthenshire Community Safety Partnership, said: “The partnership is committed to raising awareness of the dangers of volatile substances such as the inappropriate use of aerosols.
“These are also highly flammable so great care must be taken in their day-to-day use, particularly in confined spaces. Parents need to be vigilant about excessive use and we all need to make our children aware of the dangers of misusing aerosols.
“Talks are already given to young people and as part of the partnership’s joint commissioning strategy for substance misuse, an action plan for children and young people will be developed to include additional ways of tackling this important concern.”

taken from WalesOnline

Deaths from VSA in the UK rose in 2006 to 49 from 45 in 2005

2008-08-01T13:53:00.003Z

A report released today by the Division of Community Health Sciences at St George’s, University of London, reveals that altogether in 2006 there were 49 deaths in the UK associated with volatile substance abuse. The report "Trends in Death Associated with Abuse of Volatile Substances 1971-2006", which was prepared for the Department of Health, describes trends in death associated with the abuse of gas fuels, aerosols, glues, anaesthetic agents and other solvent based products.
In 2006, butane from all sources accounted for 33 of the 49 deaths and of these butane cigarette lighter refills formed the largest group. Five deaths in 2006 were as a result of asphyxia associated with the inhalation of nitrous oxide.
In under-18 year olds there were six deaths resulting from volatile substance abuse in 2006, compared with eight in 2005. Two of these deaths were associated with butane cigarette lighter refills, the sale of which to under-18s is prohibited by legislation.
Deaths were generally sudden and in 2006 were three times more common in males than females. Of the 49 deaths in 2006, ten were suicides involving the inhalation of a volatile substance. For both adults and children volatile substance abuse leading to death usually took place in the home.

Re-Solv is pleased to note that deaths in the under-18 year olds continues to fall. With the introduction this year of our Toxic Agents Primary School pack we are in the best possible position to help keep those figures down.

There is a worrying trend in deaths of long term adult abusers and in VSA being used in suicide. These difficult to address areas will need a strong focus in the coming months and years ahead.

For further details of the St George's Report please click here.

If you would like any further information on Re-Solv's work please see our website or email information@re-solv.org.

Huffing leads to Indiana car explosion

2008-06-10T10:56:00.000Z

Three area teens are in an Indianapolis hospital today after a car they were in exploded Friday night in Lafayette.

According to police, the three girls were huffing from an aerosol can shortly before the explosion.
Lafayette Police were called to an explosion in the 2000 block of Elk Street on the city's north side at 10:13 p.m. Friday.
According to Lafayette Police Lt. Jim Taul, three 17 year-old girls had been huffing from an aerosol can inside a parked Honda Accord "when one of them decided to light a cigarette."
The flame ignited the fumes, causing an explosion that blew the windows out of the car, he said. "People heard the explosion a block away."
Since they are under 18, the names of the girls are not being released. All three were transported to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Taul said. The extent of their injuries is unclear.
It's not clear if the three will face any charges, Taul said.

taken from jconline.com

New primary school resource launched

2008-04-24T13:55:00.002Z

Re-Solv is proud to present “Toxic Agents” - the most detailed resource for primary school age children the we have ever produced.
Toxic Agents has been put together by Re-Solv’s Youth Liaison Officer, Kay Carter, following research and consultation with primary school teachers and students. The resulting pack is one of the most comprehensive available and features wonderful design work by Helen Javes who has worked on Shaun the Sheep and other Aardman Animations productions.
In the report Drugs : Guidance For Schools, the DfES has stated “Drug education should start in primary schools...The transition from primary to secondary is particularly important, given the pattern of young people’s drug use; drug education in Years 7 and 8 should reinforce and build upon drug education in primary schools... VSA needs to be addressed at an early point in the drug education curriculum because of the potential for early onset experimentation, the availability of products open to abuse within the home and school, and the particular dangers posed by VSA.”

The pack includes a 70 page booklet designed to help teachers get the most out of the teaching materials. Also included are a 7 minute DVD, 30 leaflets, 30 character postcards and stickers.
The pack retails for £35 and can be ordered from the publications section on our website.
www.re-solv.org

Grieving Mom: Can of compressed air can kill

2008-03-20T16:26:00.002Z

Kaitlyn Vallery was a 16-year-old girl fighting a drug problem. She’d tried marijuana and cocaine but that’s not what killed her said her mother Cheri. “Heard the water running in the bathroom still and that’s when the sense of panic came over me.”
Panic from the water running too long after Kaitlyn went to take a bath.
They found her with a can of Freon-laced compressed air dusting spray nearby.
Kaitlyn, her mother says, had inhaled it to get high, passed out and drowned. “We were in the hospital saying our final goodbyes to her.”
Goodbyes voiced two years ago. But for Cheri and Jon Vallery the pain and the promises to their daughter live on.
“I made a promise to her that night that I would do whatever I could to make sure no one else had to go through the pain the heartache we were feeling that night,” said Cheri.
That was the beginning of Kaitlyn’s Promise.
It is a website that educates teens about the dangers of inhalant abuse.
It is a problem on par with illegal drug use. It’s where spray cans, lighters, and other household products are the source of a cheap and sometimes deadly high.
The latest studies have shown that by eighth grade one in five teenagers have tried this.
And they’re not just learning it from their friends.
Like anything else these days, it’s glamorized on the internet too.
To fight this, the Vallery’s will take their story to Washington DC later this week.
They plan to tell a nationwide audience about the dangers and about the daughter they lost. “Oh I have to. I’m still her mom and this is what I’m doing for her, “ said Cheri.
She does that while hoping no other mom will have to do the same.

taken from KHOU.com

US Teens Prefer Inhalants to Marijuana, Researchers Say

2008-03-20T10:55:00.002Z

Studies by the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition, with sponsorship from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, revealed that kids on the brink of being teenagers are using inhalants more often than marijuana and prescription painkillers.
According to these studies, inhaling common household products such as shoe polish, glue, aerosol air fresheners, hair sprays, nail polish, paint solvents, degreasers, gasoline and lighter fluid now appear to be the preferred way to get high in this age group.
About 3.4 percent of 12-year-olds reported using an inhalant, while only 1.1 percent tried marijuana, and 2.7 percent took prescription painkillers in 2007. That trend continued with 13-year-olds, with 4.8 percent using inhalants, 4 percent trying marijuana, and 3.9 percent taking prescription painkillers. By age 14, inhalant use dropped behind the use of marijuana, painkillers and other drugs.
“Our data show that 1.1 million 12-to-17-year-olds acknowledge using inhalants last year. Our data also indicate that there are almost 600,000 teenagers [who] start using inhalants annually,” Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse, said Thursday, according to Forbes.
Adolescent girls seem particularly vulnerable to inhalant abuse. According to the report, 41 percent of hospital admissions for inhalant abuse involved teenage girls, whereas only 30 percent of hospital admissions for non-inhalant drug abuse involved teen girls.
Dr. Clark added that short-term effects of inhalants include dizziness, nausea, confusing and lack of coordination. They can also cause neurological damage, along with sudden death from cardiac reactions or lack of oxygen. An exact number of adolescent dying from inhalants is not known though.
“Once kids start using inhalants, they are more susceptible to using other drugs like marijuana, methamphetamine and cocaine as they age. Inhalants can produce psychological effects, but because they're readily accessible they are substitutes for other drugs,” Dr. Clark said.
He urged parents to be aware that preteens and young teenagers are at risk for using inhalants, just as older teens are, and they should be discussing these issues with their children.
“Parents should be able to clearly explain that inhalants are not drugs of abuse, but deadly poisons that while they may produce an effect also produce unintended consequences,” Dr. Clark said.
The studies also found that forty five percent of teens who used inhalants suffer from psychiatric disorders, compared with 29 percent of teens who used other drugs.

taken from eFluxMedia

Essex Shop owners warned over solvent sales

2008-03-06T12:19:00.002Z

03 March 2008 06:47

by RODDY ASHWORTH

SHOP owners in Essex will be punished if they sell solvents to people under the age of 18, trading standards officers have warned.

It follows random testing during which 10% of shops supplied a youngster with lighter fuel. Throughout February Essex County Council Trading Standards conducted test sales for solvents at 50 stores across the county, using an underage volunteer.

Five stores broke the law by agreeing to sell the test purchaser, a 14-year-old girl.

On each occasion the volunteer, who was supervised throughout the process, attempted to purchase butane lighter refills.

Statistics show that these account for the majority of deaths among people using them for intoxication purposes, due to volatile substance abuse (VSA). A number of shops visited also indicated that they would have made the sale, but were out of stock or unable to locate their supply.

Trading Standards officers re-visited these retailers to advise them on age restricted sales. The stores visited included both smaller independent stores and major retail chains.

Trading Standards officers said they were concerned that some retailers still believe that the legal age for purchasing solvents is 16, rather than 18.

Statistics compiled by St George's University of London show that VSA is responsible for more deaths amongst young people aged 10-16 than “conventional” illegal drugs.

Roger Walters, county council executive member for Trading Standards said: “Solvent abuse is a serious problem, which is why these products should not be made available to young people under the age of 18. “There is simply no excuse for stores to flout the law on this.“We are planning to conduct more test sales for solvents, and any retailers who continue to ignore our warnings can expect to be punished severely.”

taken from Suffold & Essex online

Lighter fumes kill Caernarfon 23-yr-old

2008-02-28T14:31:00.001Z

Feb 28 2008

A YOUNG man has died after sniffing lighter fuel in a tragic experiment which went wrong.
Gareth William Watkin Hughes, 23, had been sniffing the fuel in the back of a friend’s car near Bangor.
To their horror, he stopped breathing and collapsed.
His friends called for an ambulance which rushed him to Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor.
Doctors put him on a life support machine but it was too late to save him.
Gareth, a mechanic of Cil Isaf, Caernarfon, known to his friends as Gags, died later that night, last Saturday.
His family said yesterday that they wished to warn others of the dangers of sniffing lighter fuel.
Gareth, one of seven siblings, had gone out with friends, who, it is believed, were experimenting with the lighter fuel in a friend’s car at Glasinfryn near Bangor.
Gareth’s fiancée, Ceri Roberts, 18, of Yr Hendre, Caernarfon, said she first knew something was wrong when she received a phone call from one of his friends telling her to go to hospital.
She told the Daily Post: “We don’t know much at the moment but believe he’d taken lighter fuel.
“He’d gone with a mate to see one of their other friends.
“One of his friends phoned me to tell me to go to casualty.
“He was a lovely young man and liked going out with his friends.
“He was great with kids – his nephews and niece – and they adored him.
“When we got engaged Gareth said he’d marry me one day.
“We had planned on having children.”
The couple had been together for four years.
One of Gareth’s sisters, Emma Hughes, 26, from Hiraul, Bangor, said: “Unfortunately Gareth and his friends were playing around with lighter fuel – with tragic consequences for him.
“It was the first time he’d ever done it.
“He stopped breathing. His friend phoned for an ambulance.
“He collapsed and was put on a life-support machine but his heart wasn’t working.
“We want to warn people about the dangers of experimenting or playing with lighter fuel.
“We hope this will be a lesson for others.
“It was a terrible and unexpected shock.
“An inquest is going to be held into what was a tragic accident. From what we know, the post-mortem has not yet been concluded.”
Emma added: “He was easy-going and always had a smile on his face. He always wore a baseball hat.
“He liked messing about with and fixing cars. His other interests were fishing and playing golf.”
Gareth worked as a mechanic at Vixen Steels, Llanberis.
He had been brought up in Dyffryn Nantlle and attended Ysgol Talysarn and Ysgol Baladeulyn before the family moved to Caernarfon and he went to Ysgol Syr Hugh Owen.
Since the tragedy his friends have painted “In loving memory” on the side of his souped-up Nova car.
A North Wales police spokeswoman yesterday confirmed that there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Gareth Hughes’s death and the coroner had been informed.

by Hywel Trewyn, Daily Post

40,000 young Thais victims of additive inhalant

2008-01-25T11:35:00.000Z

BANGKOK, JAN 25 (TNA)--At least 40,000 young Thais, mostly from poor families, are addicted to breathing inhalants, with the use of inhalants ranking third among addictive drugs in Thailand, an anti-narcotics official said Friday.
Deputy Director General of the Narcotics Control and Suppression Board, Pitaya Jinawat, said young people are easily lured to inhalant use due to its cheap price and the authorities' ignorance to crack down on illegal inhalant trading and consumption has resulted in the widespread distribution of the substance.
He called on traders to help control the distribution of inhalants to young people. At the same time he appealed to the private sector not to reject employing inhalant addicts who are rehabilitated.
Mr. Pitaya said police usually ignored arresting inhalant addicts to avoid the burden of having to send them for rehabilitation while some rehabilitation centres or hospitals would not admit the young people for treatment.
However, a law amending the Inhalant Prevention Act which will be in force in July this year will impose harsher punishment against those selling the substances to young people and allow addict to undergo medical treatment before an indictment, he said.
The law also raises the age of young people allowed to buy inhalants from 17 to 18 years of age, Mr. Pitaya said, admitting that young addicts can easily ask their older peers to buy inhalant for them. (TNA)

From the Thai News Agency

Confessions of a Gasoline Huffer

2008-01-17T14:05:00.000Z

How It Happened, Why I Did It, What It Felt Like
by Brendan Kiley

Fran Handford was a retired schoolteacher who sat in a rocking chair, smoking long white cigarettes with shaky hands and listening to public radio. She and her husband Dana lived in the woods on Bainbridge Island, just down the road from my parents. Dana was tall and thin and drank a glass of buttermilk every day at lunch to keep his weight up. He saved his pee in a bucket by the back door to pour onto his compost pile. He was a psychiatrist and had been associated, in the 1950s, with the first American psychiatrists to study psychedelics. The Handfords had an impressionist landscape over the fireplace, by a friend of theirs. Fran once pointed at it and said, in her quavering old-lady voice, "I think he painted that after he had taken El-Es-Dee."
I was their primary gardener and houseboy that summer. I got $8 an hour and a pair of surrogate grandparents. They sometimes hired additional help: an ex-con named Tony who lived in a halfway house, a 25-year-old stoner named Eric who still lived with his parents. As a teenager, I liked being around ex-cons and stoners and always fell for the racy girls who took drugs and skipped class. (At the time, I was dating a girl who lived in Seattle—even racier. Sex was still a pleasant mystery, but getting closer every day.) They made me feel tougher by association. On Saturdays, I came over to weed, prune, fix, paint, sweep, and mow. Burn days were the best, when I'd stand around all afternoon with a rake, watching a fire twice as tall as I was incinerate the detritus from the previous year's windstorms and yard projects.
The Handfords' house had peeling red paint and an old wisteria vine strangling the front porch. Inside, it was like a library where people happened to live. Books covered and sometimes tumbled off of shelves in every room—the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallways. There were books on the floor. They were good books, books Fran encouraged me to read: Slaughterhouse-Five, Mrs. Dalloway, Catch-22; nonfiction by Isaiah Berlin, Arthur Schlesinger, Winston Churchill; poetry by Dylan Thomas, E. E. Cummings, and T. S. Eliot. I read on the job, stealing time from them—time I was supposed to be weeding, pruning, and fixing. They knew: They were saints that way. They thought that any time I spent with a book would be good for me.
I took more books from their house than anyone can remember, and dutifully returned them—with one exception. I was too embarrassed to ask to borrow it. The book: Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings, a 575-page collection of essays, written by psychologists and psychiatrists, published in 1969. It has a stained white dust jacket with a line drawing of a bald man meditating and some EKG scribbles in black, red, and green.
I crouched in the Handfords' basement, next to the box where I found it, flipping through its pages. Some passages were hypnotically opaque, about "autogenic training" and "psychophysiology" and other jargon I didn't understand. Some were druggy but erudite, like where William James explains how getting high on nitrous oxide helped him "understand better than ever before both the strength and weakness of Hegel's philosophy." Some were just druggy (I imagined this spoken in a soft man's voice, like something you'd hear from a groovy 1960s British movie): "Shortly after swallowing the pill, I began to feel the effects. I was looking at the green grass and green hills of the countryside. Slowly the green changed into a lavender... My body was deep purple. It was an extremely pleasant sensation. It resembled sleeping between covers of purple velvet, an experience which I had at one time in my life and which was very sensuously enjoyable."
I took the book home.
That night, sitting in bed, I read an essay by Dr. Frederick B. Glaser called "Inhalation Psychosis and Related States." Dr. Glaser studied people who huffed gasoline, glue, and other organic solvents. He was a writer whose subjects seemed like characters, entire lives evoked in details. The child who "used a dispersion principle, distributing gasoline over the surface of a large salad bowl and then inhaling, somewhat after the technique of the brandy snifter." The Swedish kids who "placed paint thinner in perfume sprayers and sold sniffs to their habituated classmates." The tenacious Texas kid whose parents chained him up to keep him from huffing, but who "broke free by dint of remarkable effort... the boy achieved newspaper notoriety as 'The Sniffer.'"
Dr. Glaser had me. I wondered and began to care, along with him, why research showed a high rate of huffing among Latinos but "in a Chicago study which found Negroes to be well represented among juvenile alcoholics and in the city population, there were no Negro inhalers." I was absorbed in the mystery of the weirdo who began huffing when he was 33. I wanted to know who these people were, what their lives were like. They were distant and foreign, people whose lives I couldn't imagine. What did they do every day? What did they know that I didn't? I wished I could talk to them. I wished I could join their society. Like any kid, I wanted secrets, wanted a life of my own. Now that I'm almost 30, I've got more secrets than I want.
One Saturday at the Handfords', I took a squat, silver canister of gas, used to fill the weed whacker, from the shed. I walked into the woods, sat on a soft bed of brown needles at the bottom of a cedar tree, and unscrewed the lid. I put my mouth to the aperture and inhaled. I felt the thick fumes reaching like tentacles down my throat and into my stomach. There was a strange sound, like the echoing call of a bird I'd never heard before. The bird I imagined was dark blue, almost black. The tree I was sitting beneath began to sway. The tree became sentient and uprooted itself, and then fell over, grew four legs, and invited me onto its back. I don't remember it walking the eight miles to town, but suddenly there we were, in the middle of the street, me straddling a tree. We were in a parade, like the one that happens on the island every Fourth of July, with vets in their jeeps and farmers on their tractors. I waved at all the people on the sidewalk, hoping they didn't realize I was high on gasoline.
When I came to and stumbled out of the woods, dazed, my legs weren't working properly. I lurched back into the garden of perennials I was supposed to be weeding, a garden at the edge of a bluff, and kneeled in the wet mud, hoping nobody would find me. A few hours later, I could almost walk and talk normally, and went home.
Gasoline was stronger than any drug I'd heard of—it took me out of the world altogether. It had to be bad for me. I remembered histrionic news stories and public-service-announcement language about the dangers of huffing. A contemporary sample, from www.drgreene.com: "About 22 percent of those who die from huffing do so on the first time they try it... When huffing doesn't kill quickly, it damages the body each time—especially the brain. Huffing can cause memory loss, impaired concentration, hearing loss, loss of coordination, and permanent brain damage... if you suspect or discover that your child is huffing, get professional help. Treating inhalant abuse is very difficult and requires expert intervention."
It didn't make sense for me to be a gas huffer. I wasn't desperate like the people in Davis Inlet, on the Labrador coast, who became famous for gas huffing in the early 1990s. The major pastimes in Davis Inlet were suicide, drinking moonshine, and not graduating from high school. Families froze inside one-room concrete shacks and domestic violence was common, but Canada didn't do anything about it until 1993, when a police officer released a videotape of six Davis Inlet children huffing gasoline and screaming that they wanted to die. The Canadian government's solution was to build a new town, Natuashish, 15 kilometers away, for residents of Davis Inlet who wanted to start over.
Huffing has been such a problem among Australian aboriginal kids that, in 2005, the oil company BP invented a new kind of "unsniffable" fuel called Opal. (The BP website quotes an e-mail from a social worker: "...as I write, I can see a 10-year-old girl outside the window with half a Coke bottle filled with unleaded petrol tied over her mouth and nose. She may well never reach her 12th birthday.") Consider that: So many people were huffing that a multinational oil company told its scientists to invent a new kind of gas.
I wasn't a poor kid, but I'd seen poor kids fucked up by huffing, during the spring before my gasoline summer, when I was an exchange student in Nicaragua. I visited a shelter for urchins, some of them little tiny kids, who wandered the markets of Managua, begging for pennies to spend on baby-food jars filled with rubber cement they bought from shoe repairmen. The glue made them feel warm, full, and happy—the opposite of how they normally felt. It also made them vicious. They had nasty fights over food, territory, and imagined slights, slashing at each other with shards of broken glass. The kids in the shelter were covered in scars and nicks. All of us—the urchins, the people who took care of them, some other exchange students—took a bus to Lake Nicaragua one afternoon. We ran around on the beach and splashed in the brown water. On the way back, I sat in the back of the bus, teaching the kids poker. They stole my wallet and passed it to the front, one of them waving it in the air and smiling before throwing it back to me.
I said I thought it was funny, but one of the social workers—a pretty, middle-aged woman—rebuked me. These kids learn to steal because they're addicts, she growled. And the goddamned shoe repairmen are goddamned pushers. There's nothing cute about children addicted to toxic solvents.
The next Saturday, I snuck back into the shed and sat next to the squat silver canister. I unscrewed the cap, leaned over the aperture, felt the vaporous tentacles reach into my stomach, and heard the call of the dark-blue bird. A small fairy girl, as tall as my forearm, appeared. She didn't make any real words, but communicated by telepathy and giggling and I admired her wings, all translucent and shiny. She lived in the rose bushes and let me know that these gardens and woods were a special place, a place I'd never been able to really see until now. There was another sound, in a minor key, and the air turned sinister. The toys and tools in the shed—tricycles, pruners, riding lawn mowers—were rumbling, rustling angrily, forming an army that could crush me with wheels, cut me with blades, bludgeon me with handles. I was an interloper, a spy in the secret, vengeful lives of toys and tools. I hoped they wouldn't hurt the Rosebush Fairy.
I came to, lying on the floor of the shed, thinking that we lived in a world in which objects conspired against people. I held onto the idea for a while.
It was the same every Saturday for three or four months: the rasp of the lid as I unscrewed it, the sloshing gasoline, the tentacles reaching into my stomach, the dark-blue bird. The Rosebush Fairy usually came to giggle and preen and communicate fairy-tale secrets about the forests and gardens. I wish I could remember the things she told me.
My breath stunk of gasoline for days at a time. I'd come back from the Handfords' and my mother would ask where that gasoline smell was coming from. I'd say I'd been using the weed whacker, quickly finish my glass of water, and hurry upstairs to shower. Later, at dinner, she'd mention I still smelled like gasoline. I'd shrug. The next day, I might see my girlfriend who lived in the city. When she kissed me, she'd say my mouth tasted like a gas station. Somehow, nobody figured it out.
One Saturday after work, I was at my parents' house listening to old records—I'd just learned how to work the phonograph and there were stacks of neglected vinyl in the Handfords' basement—when I distinctly heard the call of the dark-blue bird. It came out of the speakers. I checked the record. The call of the bird matched the first chord of Bach's second orchestral suite in B minor, when the violins begin to trill over the harpsichord. I wondered what that meant. I thought about the Rosebush Fairy. I realized I had a crush on her, which was both embarrassing and crazy. Even crazier, I wondered: What about my girlfriend? Was I cheating on her by liking this fairy? I wasn't doing anything with the fairy, just talking.
Upstairs, I re-reread Dr. Glaser's essay and stopped on this sentence, which I had barely noticed before: "On a rather impressionistic level it may be noted that a general feeling of eroticism pervades many reports of inhalation." Likewise, I stopped on the story of a 5-year-old boy who
had a pleasant hallucination of friendly, gnomelike men who were fond of him and spoke kindly to him. At this time, parental discord was intense. The patient felt like his father was abusive and severe with him. 'Father heckled me and gave my mother and me heck at everything I did.' Because of this, he began to plot with the men of his hallucinations to remove his father. He said, 'I want to make Father go away so I can go off someplace with Mom and we can make a living together and be happy on a farm.' His hallucinations promised to help him if he would never call again. Quite by coincidence, the father left on a three weeks' trip about this time.
Wish fulfillment. The kid had his gnomes. And I was having an affair with a fairy.
At some point that summer, I was at a typically druggy high-school party, with beer in the kitchen, cigarettes on the lawn, and a bunch of people sitting in a circle in the bedroom with a lava lamp, passing around a pot pipe. The house belonged to a waitress from Spokane and an aspiring acid dealer. These weren't really my friends, but I was happy to be included. Next to me on the couch was Jim, who had studs in his jacket and played guitar in a Bainbridge Island band and was on the high-school debate team. I wanted to say something to him, but I didn't know what, so I asked if he had ever huffed gasoline.
His laugh said: Oh yeah—gasoline. My old friend.
I told him about the secret walks into the woods, the hallucinations—everything except the Rosebush Fairy. That was too embarrassing.
"How could a drug be that powerful?" I asked. "Like I'm right out of my head?"
"Um," he said, "it makes cars go."
One Saturday, my racy girlfriend came from the city to visit me after I finished work. Like every Saturday when everyone else thought I was working, I'd been in the woods huffing. I'd unscrewed the lid, heard the call of the dark-blue bird, and seen the Rosebush Fairy. She'd giggled, showed me her wings, but seemed different somehow. She wasn't happy and ethereal—she was weirdly flirty and erotic. She batted her eyes, wiggled her ass, and leered. She was hungry and gross, a portent from the adult future of crude, selfish sex. She didn't want to communicate secrets or even kiss me—she wanted to fuck. I wasn't sure how to fuck. It was horrifying. Then she lifted her skirt over her head.
If I weren't in a stupor, I would've screamed.
I'd known what I was doing was dangerous—that inhaling gasoline, that thing that makes cars go, was probably giving me brain damage. But, until this moment, I'd almost hoped it would give me brain damage. Putting my mouth to the metal aperture and feeling the tentacles reaching down my throat was an attempt to stay innocent and dumb, to spare myself the sadness and disenchantment of growing up. Getting my first pubic hair fucked me up. Pubic hair meant puberty, puberty meant adulthood, and adulthood meant pain, suffering, and death. I was sentimental for childhood even while I was still a child. Gasoline was a way to dodge the flat, sterile doom of adulthood. I wanted to stay in the woods.
I stumbled out of the woods and saw my girlfriend. She was just standing there. She'd come early.
My legs wouldn't work, my tongue was too thick to form words, and I couldn't do anything but feel bad. She didn't know anything about my gasoline habit except having tasted it in my mouth. She watched me lurch around on the grass, gabbling, reeking of fumes. She panicked. She cried. I tried to explain, but she didn't understand and neither did I.
One night six months ago, I was sitting outdoors in Eastern Washington, in a circle with some friends, and the conversation failed. One drunk woman said, all in one breath: "Let'stellsecretsIstealthings." She paused. "I shoplift."
We went around the circle and people unloaded their secrets: eavesdropping on sex, reading other people's diaries. When it was my turn, I knew which secret I wanted to unload, the one I didn't want anymore—I'd never talked about gasoline huffing with anyone except that guy at that party years ago, never told anyone about Altered States of Consciousness or the Rosebush Fairy or how, to this day, the opening chord of Bach's second orchestral suite makes me woozy. But I didn't. I held onto it a little longer. I told another secret, one I wasn't genuinely embarrassed about.
The Handfords died a few years ago, but I still have Altered States of Consciousness. It sits on a lower shelf in a bookcase in my closet. That shelf is for embarrassments from my youth—forgotten magazines that published stories I'd written, notebooks full of childish poems and adolescent confessions, scrapbooks with pictures of ex-girlfriends. It's the shelf where I keep things I wish I could get rid of.

taken from The Stranger

Opal fuel can kill, inquest told

2008-01-15T10:42:00.000Z

A NEW "non-sniffable" fuel designed to combat petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities can kill when inhaled, an inquest has been told.
A 12-year-old boy died after sniffing Opal fuel at Hermannsburg, 120 kilometres west of Alice Springs, after a youth disco in April this year.
His death is the first known casualty from sniffing the new fuel, which has much lower levels of the aromatics that provide sniffers with a "high" when compared with standard unleaded petrol.
Made by BP, Opal has been credited with dramatically reducing petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities since first being introduced in 2005, and has since been rolled out across central Australia.
But an inquest in Alice Springs was told yesterday that the boy who died was a regular sniffer and his case would be "of some public interest" because of the broadly held belief Opal is not harmful if inhaled.
"(There is) a perception that Opal fuel is not able to be sniffed and indeed … BP refers to it as 'Opal non-sniffable'," counsel assisting the coroner Celia Kemp told the inquest.
"Your honour will hear evidence that this is not the case. Like any volatile substance, Opal can be sniffed, and can be fatal when sniffed. However, it is much less appealing to sniffers because it does not cause them to become high in the way unleaded petrol does."
The case was adjourned to March.

taken from The Age

Boys in killer craze mercy dash!

2007-11-09T10:19:00.000Z

TWO schoolboys took a potentially lethal cocktail of solvents and alcohol and were rushed to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness at the weekend.
One of the lads, who was found lying unconscious in a Smithton street, was in such a critical condition he was placed on a ventilator.
The incident in the early hours of Saturday morning has sparked fears that a craze which was thought less common amongst teenagers could be on the rise again.
And a city drugs worker said the youngsters were playing "Russian roulette" with their lives. Sniffing and "gas bombing" (blasts of aerosol gases into the mouth) can cause heart failure, suffocation and choking.
However, health professionals and drugs workers have been left even more concerned at the boys' actions as there was evidence they had also been drinking alcohol – creating a potentially deadly double effect.
It is believed the teenagers in the weekend drama, who have not been named but were both 15 years old, were friends had been drinking and also experimenting with the substances which can cause hallucination.
One boy was found by a passer-by lying in Smithton Park in the early hours of Saturday morning. It is believed his friend was found in the same area although he was conscious.
Chief Inspector Donald Henderson said: "In the early hours of November 3, there were a couple of youths who were admitted to Raigmore Hospital having mixed solvents with alcohol. The two cases were connected. One of the boys was found lying in a roadway in Smithton.
"The condition of the boys was serious and one of them was on a ventilator. They have since been discharged.
"It transpires they have taken a substance which is readily available and have been consuming alcohol as well.
"I want to warn people of the dangers of mixing substances with alcohol and the potential danger to their lives."
Whilst Ch Insp Henderson would not confirm whether there was anyone else involved in the incident, he added: "I would regard any person that procures such substances for youngsters as being wilful and reckless in their conduct.
"If it is found that a third party is involved then I will have them prosecuted for wilful or reckless conduct."
Police would not reveal which substances the boys were experimenting with but common solvents abused are easily accessible household items such as glue, cigarette lighter refills, aerosols and cleaning products.
John Glenday, shared care/harm reduction co-ordinator for NHS Highland explained: "Solvent use is particularly hazardous when combined with alcohol, which can seriously increase harmful toxic effects such as dizziness, slurred speech, loss of co-ordination, unconsciousness and coma.
"During 2005 there were 45 deaths associated with solvent abuse in the British Isles. It is important that everyone is aware of these dangers."
Margaret Henderson, training and development officer with Blast drugs project based on the city's Church Street, revealed: "We call experimenting with solvents the loaded gun as you can do it just once and die.
"However, solvents and alcohol are both depressants. By taking them at the same time, your body is getting a double dose of a depressant which is effectively closing your body down."
She added: "This is a hidden problem. It was always thought that it was going out of fashion but, sadly, it is coming back."
Nikki Fraser, manager of Blast, added it was alarming that the boys were so young as she more commonly sees older people getting involved in this type of abuse.
She said: "Solvent abuse is Russian roulette. People don't realise the first time they do this could be their last. Solvent abuse on its own is bad enough, but there are other risks if they are taking alcohol as well as this seriously alters judgment."
She added: "It is very worrying that these boys have done this as they are so young."
* Anyone who wants further information and support on solvent abuse can contact Re-Solv National Helpline on 01785 810762 or visit their websites: http://www.re-solv.org/ or http://www.sniffing.org.uk/.
A list of local alcohol and drug agencies can be found on the Highland Drug and Alcohol Action Team website at http://www.hdaat.org.uk/

By Claire Doughty in the Highland News

'Huffing' Household Chemicals Connected To Teen Suicide

2007-11-01T10:14:00.000Z

With suicide as the third leading cause of death among adolescents in the United States, a new University of Denver study reveals inhaling or "huffing" vapors of common household goods, such as glue or nail polish, are associated with increased suicidal thoughts and attempts.
See also:
Of the study's participants, 33 percent reported having inhaled volatile solvents, 25 percent had attempted suicide, and 58 percent reported suicidal thoughts.
Stacey Freedenthal and Jeffrey M. Jenson of DU's Graduate School of Social Work joined researchers from Chapel Hill and the University of Pittsburgh in a study of 723 incarcerated youth. "Inhalant Use and Suicidality among Incarcerated Youth" appeared in the September 2007 issue of the academic journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. The study was the first work to categorize both levels of severity of inhalant use and gender in relation to suicidal ideas and suicide attempts.
The investigators found a significant increase in suicidal thoughts and attempts with higher use of volatile solvents. Researchers did not determine which problem came first, the huffing or the suicidal behavior, but showed that the two are undeniably connected, even when accounting for numerous other factors. Freedenthal warns parents to be aware of the possibility of suicidal thoughts in children who have been caught inhaling household chemicals.
"Inhalant use has many serious, physiological consequences, including death," says Freedenthal. "Now we are learning ever more strongly that they are also linked to suicidal thoughts and behaviors."
The study found the correlation between huffing and suicidality greater in girls than boys. More than 80 percent of girls who abused inhalants revealed a history of suicide attempts, while less than 60 percent of boys showed the same history. The study also indicated that suicidal thoughts were much higher for girls than boys. Suicidal thoughts and attempts were considered two separate constructs, since thoughts do not always lead to attempts, and attempts are not always preceded by much thought.
The study involved 723 participants incarcerated by the Missouri Division of Youth Services, 629 boys and 94 girls at an average age of 15. Participants were asked if they huffed any of the 35 common household substances, such as paint, paint thinner, shoe polish, spot remover, floor polish, kerosene, gasoline, antifreeze, permanent markers, nail polish remover, mothballs, waxes, lighter fluid, and others.

Taken from ScienceDaily

Teen accused of crashing car while huffing

2007-10-17T12:51:00.000Z

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Police say mom tried to remove evidence against daughter

The mother of a Spartanburg teenager accused of huffing compressed air before crashing a friend's car Sunday has joined her daughter in jail.
Kelly Hewitt Furr (left), 39, of 240 S. Main St., Clifton, was charged with accessory after the fact to a felony Friday on allegations she removed the cans of air from the car in an attempt to hide evidence. Three passengers injured in the wreck remained hospitalized Friday, one of whom has yet to regain consciousness.
Furr's daughter, Heather Brooke Hewitt, 19, of 1451 Old Pacolet Road is being held at the Spartanburg County Detention Facility with bond set at $25,000 on two counts of felony driving under the influence. Furr's bond was set at $40,000.
According to prosecutors, Hewitt was huffing the canned air to get high - also known as dusting - when she crashed a 1997 Toyota Camry into a truck Sunday afternoon on Beacon Light Road near Cowpens. Her mother came to the scene of the crash and removed several cans from the vehicle, Principal Deputy Solicitor Barry Barnette said during a Friday bond hearing for Furr.
"She said, 'I know she's been dusting! I know she's been dusting!' " Barnette said. " ... She knew what was in the car, and she took care of it."
Witnesses said Furr also showed little concern for those injured in the crash and refused to ride in the ambulance with her daughter to the hospital, Barnette said.
Furr puzzled by charge
Furr said little during the hearing but told the judge she didn't understand the charge against her.
"That's what upsets me," she said.
One of Hewitt's five passengers, Jamie Maxwell, 23, of Roebuck suffered closed head injuries and remains unconscious at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center. Maranda Poteet, 17, of Inman suffered severe facial injuries, is blind in the left eye and is listed in serious condition at the hospital. A third passenger, Kelly Collins, 21, of Roebuck is in fair condition at Spartanburg Regional, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Hewitt was released from the hospital Thursday and taken to jail. If released on bond, she is to remain on home detention. Conditions of Furr's bond include no contact with any witness or victim in the crash, including her daughter, if released.
Barnette said Hewitt had a past conviction for disturbing schools, and State Law Enforcement Division records show Furr has a previous conviction for criminal domestic violence.
Inhaling compressed air, which is sold to clean computer keyboards and electronics and used by some teens as a quick high, contains chemicals that can cause organ damage and death through suffocation.

By Rachel E. Leonard

taken from the Spartanburg Herald Journal

"Huffing" Linked With Suicidal Behavior in Incarcerated Teens

2007-10-05T12:59:00.000Z

Inhaling, or "huffing," the vapors of common household solvents strongly correlates with suicidal thoughts and behavior among adolescents.
That’s what researchers found in a study of 723 incarcerated youth--the first work to categorize inhalant use into levels of severity and relate this to suicidal ideas and suicide attempts in incarcerated juveniles. It is also one of the few studies to examine gender differences involved.
"Inhalant Use and Suicidality among Incarcerated Youth," by Dr. Stacey Freedenthal and Dr. Jeffrey M. Jenson, both of the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work, Dr. Michael G. Vaughn of the University of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Matthew O. Howard of the University of North Carolina, appears in the September 2007 issue of the academic journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
The investigators found an increase in suicidal thoughts and attempts with higher levels of use of volatile solvents. In fact, the majority of those in the sample who had been serious abusers prior to incarceration reported having tried to kill themselves at some point.
The researchers did not seek to determine which problem came first, the huffing or the suicidality, but showed that the two are connected, even when accounting for other factors.
The study points out that suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents in the U.S., and that the rates of suicide attempts appear to be very much higher for those who use inhalants than for those who do not.
The study categorized inhalant use into three levels: no use, use without dependence or abuse, and use with a diagnosis of dependence or abuse. The research controlled for factors such as alcohol and other drug use, psychiatric disturbances, and trauma to see if these accounted for the suicidal behavior, but the link specifically between higher levels of inhalant use and suicidality remained distinct for both genders.
The most startling numbers related to girls, revealing a history of suicide attempts among 81.3 percent of those who abused or were dependent on inhalants, with boys in the same category at 59.5 percent.
"Girls' problems tended to be more severe," Dr. Freedenthal says. "For participants who reported dependence or abuse of inhalants, rates of suicide attempts were dramatically higher for girls. However, prior research indicates that while girls attempt suicide more often than boys do, boys actually die by suicide at higher rates."
The study also indicated that suicidal thoughts were much higher for girls than for boys. Suicidal thoughts and attempts were considered two separate constructs, since thoughts do not always lead to attempts, and attempts are not always preceded by much thought.
The study involved 723 participants incarcerated by the Missouri Division of Youth Services, 33 percent of whom reported having inhaled volatile solvents. Twenty-five percent had attempted suicide, and 58 percent reported suicidal thoughts.
Fifty-three percent were from urban or suburban environments, and 47 percent were from rural areas or small towns. Fifty-five percent were white, 33 percent were black, and nearly 12 percent were other races. There were 629 boys and 94 girls. The average age was 15.
Participants were asked if they had huffed any of 35 common household substances, such as paint, paint thinner, glue, shoe polish, spot remover, floor polish, kerosene, gasoline, antifreeze, permanent markers, nail polish, nail polish remover, mothballs, waxes, lighter fluid, and others.
Study participants comprised 97.7 percent of all residents in Missouri's youth incarceration facilities at the time the data were collected, and 55 percent of all youth committed in Missouri that year.
"The very high proportion interviewed is an important distinction of our study. Researchers usually examine a small sample and extrapolate the results to a much larger population, but we interviewed nearly all adolescents incarcerated in juvenile detention centers in Missouri at that time," says Dr. Freedenthal. "This means our study is very closely representative of that state's incarcerated youth."
In light of their findings, the researchers recommend that professionals who deal with troubled youth ask both about solvent use and suicidality when assessing patients for either, because each may be a warning sign for the other. However, Dr. Freedenthal and her co-authors acknowledge that their findings may not apply to non-incarcerated youth. She says future research should look at community samples, as well as samples with different proportions of gender, race, ethnicity, and type of community (rural vs. urban).
Future research should also explore whether inhalant use precedes the suicidality or vice versa to determine if one causes the other, and the specific ways the two issues relate to each other, she says.

Wendy's Ad Generates Complaints

2007-10-04T10:31:00.000Z

NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Hamburger chain Wendy's International Inc. is getting complaints that its TV commercial showing floating customers who apparently inhaled helium sends the wrong message to children about inhalants.
The ad shows customers standing next to a pressurized tank talking in high-pitched voices and floating to the ceiling. "Filling up with just anything, that's wrong," says the ad, which began airing a few weeeks ago.
Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini said Wednesday the company has taken a small number of calls and no plans to pull the ad.
Bertini said the ad clearly depicts an absurd scene. "It's a situation that is not real because people don't float on the ceiling," he said.
Harvey Weiss, director of the National Inhalant Prevention Council, a Texas-based organization that works to discourage the practice of "huffing" inhalants to get high, said the ad can give kids "inappropriate ideas."
"Kids get the idea it's OK to put a gas in your body," Weiss said.
Inhaling helium is not as dangerous as other gases, but it can be hazardous if inhaled from a tank.
About 20 people contacted Weiss to complain about the ad, including a woman in Pennsylvania whose son died from inhalants and a safety prevention officer who works with police in Michigan.
The organization has since sent an advisory to about 10,000 people and asked them to contact Wendy's, based in this Columbus suburb.
Other companies have pulled ads in the past that made reference to inhalants, Weiss said. "It seems like every couple of years I see something like this," he said.
FedEx Corp. pulled a commercial that debuted during the Super Bowl in 2000 after receiving complaints that it may give youngsters the impression that it was OK to "huff" inhalants.

Taken from CNNMoney.com

Fears over teenagers' deadly abuse of canisters

2007-09-07T10:55:00.000Z

By Sarah Reedman

Parents are being warned that teenagers are risking their lives by sniffing canisters of nitrous oxide and an area of Downham has been littered with them.
The small canisters, used in the catering trade to charge whipped-cream makers, are discharged into balloons and then inhaled – a practice the medical profession has warned could kill.

It is illegal to sell the canisters to people under the age of 18 – but a large number of them have been littering the area around The Howdale in Downham.

The packaging is clearly marked as "whip cream chargers" and each packet contained 24 canisters containing eight grammes of N2O – also known as laughing gas.

A spokesman for Norfolk Police said: "A number of these canisters have been found at places where young people congregate in Downham, including The Howdale. Common sense says that it is a silly thing to be doing. We regard it as anti-social behaviour and will deal with it accordingly."

A nearby resident said she feared the discarded canisters could be a danger to younger children who may not realise what they are.

"What if they find one that hasn't been emptied and start banging it or something? These things are pressurised and could cause a nasty injury," she said.

"There are loads of them laying about, and balloons that the kids have been using to sniff the gas with – it's very unpleasant," she said.

A spokesman for Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital said the accident and emergency department had not dealt with anyone yet as a result of inhaling the gas, but warned it was only a matter of time."

Misusing any kind or compressed air or gas can be highly dangerous. Inhaling from a pressurised container could cause internal damage and inhaling any kind of gas may deprive the body of oxygen.

"There is also a risk from small pieces of the metal container breaking off under pressure and these could cause injuries similar to being hit by a pellet from a high-powered air rifle or shotgun," he said.

Inhalant abuse from the sniffing of household items has been known to cause deaths from Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome.

Anyone finding a cartridge, some of which are marked SFG, is advised to contact Norfolk police on 0845 456 4567 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.

taken from http://www.lynnnews.co.uk/

Rochdale shops miss glue sniffing warning signs

2007-09-07T10:51:00.000Z

Rochdale News

"Shops in the borough selling solvents need to be more vigilant to help prevent young people glue sniffing"; that is the conclusion of a recent survey carried out by Rochdale Council's Trading Standards Service. When they asked young people to visit seven local shops to buy three or four solvent based glues along with plastic bags, four shopkeepers sold them the solvents.
Rochdale Council's Principal Trading Standards Officer, Michaela Monk said: "I was surprised by how easily young people were able to buy solvents which can be lethal if inhaled. A number of shopkeepers did not seem to heed the warning signs, like young people buying plastic bags and solvents at the same time.
"Although the focus has shifted of late to the underage sale of alcohol and cigarettes, young people are still risking their lives by abusing solvents and shop owners need to remain vigilant."
Trading standards will be revisiting the shops that sold the solvents to give the owners advice on the warning signs.
Michaela Monk continued: "Shop owners can play a big part in reducing solvent abuse by making themselves aware of the warning signs. If they do not, they could be putting their businesses on the line. Owners found guilty of mis-selling solvents can face a fine of £5000 and up to six months in prison."
There were eight deaths from volatile substance abuse amongst the under 18s in 2005 bringing the total number of deaths of all ages since 1971 to 2,198.
If you suspect that a trader may be mis-selling solvents, contact Trading Standards at Consumer Direct on 08454 040506.

Australian petrol sniffing success

2007-08-29T13:11:00.000Z

Petrol sniffing now seen as 'uncool'
Youth workers say the perception of petrol sniffing has changed radically in the central Australian Indigenous community of Papunya.
Blair McFarland, from the central Australian Youth Link-Up Service, says petrol sniffing is now seen as something to be ashamed of.
He says the community had been free of petrol sniffing for about six months, when it won the football grand final last year.
He says nearly a year after the win, young people in the community have realised how much the habit was holding them back.
"It's a culture change that really has to happen, if you really want to knock it on the head, and the same thing happened in Yuendumu, after 12 years of the Mount Theo program," he said.
"It just got to be uncool to sniff petrol."

Taken form ABC Message Stick, Australia

`Huffing' not covered by DWI laws

2007-06-29T13:55:00.000Z

June 27, 2007
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Acknowledging the decision reveals potential "gaps" in the law, New York's highest court said Wednesday that a driver who "huffed" a stimulant spray couldn't be charged with driving while intoxicated in a crash that left a teenager dead.
The ruling effectively narrows the definition of intoxicated driving to the effects of drinking alcohol or taking certain drugs.
"If defendant did what the prosecution charges, then his conduct was reprehensible," wrote Chief Judge Judith Kaye in the unanimous decision. "Perhaps gaps exist in the law ... however, a determination by this court that intoxication in Vehicle and Traffic Law includes the use of any substance would improperly override the legislative policy judgment."
Neither could the driver have been charged under a 1966 law against driving while high on drugs because that law covers only "explicitly enumerated drugs," the decision stated.
The court traced the evolution of drunken driving laws to 1910 in analyzing whether inhaling an aerosol could be a cause of intoxication.
"The (1910) law did not _ as it does not today _ define `intoxication,"' Kaye wrote. In 1919, an appellate court adopted a rule that "one is intoxicated when he has imbibed enough liquor to render him incapable of giving that attention and care to the operation of his automobile that a man of prudence and reasonable intelligence would give."
Huffing is inhaling the chemicals given off by glue, aerosols and other substances that can act as stimulants. It replaces oxygen in a person's lungs and can be fatal.
The court said it would be up to the Legislature to address huffing and new ways to get high. State Sen. Catherine Young, an Olean Republican, sponsored a bill this year that would have expanded the definition of "drug" to include "inhalants and glues" in the driving while ability impaired by drugs law. It passed the GOP-led Senate in March, but didn't get out of committee in the Democrat-led Assembly.
In the case considered by the court, Vincent Litto was also charged with manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, assault and other charges after the 2004 wreck. Litto, who was 19 at the time, was accused of driving 50 mph in Brooklyn when he picked up a can of "Dust Off" and sprayed it into his mouth. About 45 seconds later, he crashed into an oncoming car, leaving a 17-year-old girl dead and others, including himself, injured.
"I think it's significant in that hopefully district attorneys offices won't do something like this again," said Litto's attorney, Anthony Bramante.
He said Litto's trial can now go forward, without the driving while intoxicated charge. Litto has been free while he challenged the intoxicated driving charge.
Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Ann Bordley didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
By MICHAEL GORMLEY Associated Press Writer

Re-Solv Scottish Training Pack for Professionals

2007-06-26T12:19:00.000Z

1 Day Conference
£20* per delegate including Lunch/refreshments

Tuesday 4th Sept 2007
Registration 9.30-10am Conference 10am – 4.00 pm
Venue: Baptist Church, 67 Murray Place, Stirling, FK8 1AU

_____________________________________________________________

Many people believe that Volatile Substance Abuse is no longer an issue. They are wrong. Studies show that significant numbers of young people experiment with these life threatening substances. Sudden Sniffing Death can occur on the 1st episode or the 100th.

This conference aims to re-focus the attention of key stakeholders on the issue of VSA and to ensure that services embed policy and practice to both reduce VSA via proactive preventative education and to ensure that those who do practise VSA are not further endangered by inappropriate response.

Central to these aims is the launch of the Re-Solv Training Pack for Social Care personnel. Looked after and accommodated children have been demonstrated to practise VSA in volumes far in excess of those in the generic population. The launch of the pack is the culmination of a 3 year research project that Re-Solv has undertaken on behalf of the Scottish Executive.

Conference Content
Guest speakers from a variety of sectors will present different perspectives surrounding the issue of VSA. Participating speakers will include representatives from Trading Standards, Police Drug Awareness Officers, the retail sector, the Learning Exchange, SAADAT and the Freagarrach Project. An important contribution will be delivered by the parent of a child lost to VSA.
A Market Place will also be available throughout the lunch and break periods.

Who should attend?
All staff working with children or young people.

Booking Form
Volatile Substance Abuse

1 Day Conference

Date: 4th September 2007 – 9.30am -4.00 pm

Venue: Baptist Church, 67 Murray Place, Stirling
FK8 1AU

Name

Organisation

Address

Invoice address if different

Local Authority or ADAT area

Tel

Email

Any special requirements e.g. physical, sensory or dietary

Please return to: Chris Daly via Email cd@unityprojects.co.uk or fax or return by mail to: Re-Solv Head Office, 30a High St Stone, Staffordshire ST15 8AW
Tel: 01260 299093 (home office) Fax: 01260 299093

*£20 cost remains payable in the event of non attendance

DATA PROTECTION ACT 1998. This information is held securely on a computer within Re-Solv or the Forth Valley NHS Board. Access is restricted. All information is CONFIDENTIAL and is accessed only when required.

Wal-Mart, 3M sued in teenager's death from solvent

2007-06-01T08:34:00.000Z

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The parents of a California teenager who died after inhaling an aerosol dust remover sued the 3M Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Thursday for selling the substance, which produces a euphoric state when inhaled, without adequate warnings.
The lawsuit, filed in Monterey Superior Court, said both companies knew 3M Dust Remover was popular among teenage inhalant abusers, but continued selling it for years without warnings or an additive that prevents abuse.
"The product has become widely successful -- not so much for its revolutionary cleaning properties -- but because of its known association with inhalant abuse by children and teenagers who seek a cheap 'high,'" the suit said.
The practice of inhaling dust remover products, known as "dusting" has been widely reported by the U.S. media since at least 1999 and generated one national lawsuit, the complaint said.
Wal-Mart was not immediately available for comment. A 3M spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
Kasey Jo Easley, 19, died days after becoming intoxicated from "huffing" 3M Dust Remover purchased from a Wal-Mart store and falling unconscious in a hot tub on November 23, 2006 at a party at a Salinas, California home, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit also names as defendants three men who were at the home during the incident, including one who instructed the girl to buy four cans of 3M Dust Remover.
Attorney Frank Pitre, who represents the girl's parents, said Wal-Mart and 3M knew for more than a decade the product "was commonly and dangerously abused by teenagers as a drug," but failed to add a "bitteragent" used by manufacturers of similar products to prevent inhalant abuse.
3M introduced a bitteragent to the product in March, the suit said.
The suit accuses Wal-Mart and 3M of wrongful death, product liability and negligence and demands punitive damages of an amount to be determined at trial.

From Reuters

Alleged Huffing Leads To Arrest For DUI Manslaughter

2007-05-02T11:44:00.000Z

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- It's a DUI case that could be a landmark. A University of Central Florida student was arrested, not for drinking or using drugs, but for huffing.
Investigators said 20-year-old Malcolm Barnes was behind the wheel in a crash that killed a motorcyclist on Alafaya Trail in east Orange County last October
Barnes was arrested for DUI manslaughter on Friday afternoon. Detectives knew the UCF student was high when he went the wrong way down Alafaya Trail and threw 19-year-old Andrew Brannon off his motorcycle and dragged him to his death in October.
Investigators didn't find any drugs or alcohol in his system, but a homicide detective did find two aerosol cans of dust remover and rag in the back seat of his car
"She came to the conclusion he must have been under the influence of the inhalant," said Kim Miller, Florida Highway Patrol.
It's called huffing.
"You spray or soak a rag with substance and apply it to your nose and inhale the substance," explained Dr. Karl Seig.
Seig works with addiction patients. He's recently seen a spike in huffing cases. It may seem harmless, but inhaling the toxins cause brain damage and sometimes death.
Detectives said Barnes had no idea he had hit Brannon. That's why he dragged the teen 300 feet before stopping.
Barnes' father covered his son's head as he was taken into jail.
This is the first DUI manslaughter case connected with huffing. Investigators hope that sends the message that it is a dangerous drug.

From wftv.com Florida

Abuse of Inhalants Rising Among Girls, US Study Shows

2007-04-04T10:15:00.000Z

Too many people think of young boys when they imagine teenagers abusing inhalants, according to drug-abuse-prevention experts.
A report from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration shows that girls ages 12 to 17 are increasingly more likely to sniff or “huff” dangerous substances such as nail-polish remover or glue.
The agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services examined inhalant use between 2002 and 2005. The rates of use stayed about the same over that time, with 4.5 percent of the 12- to 17-year-olds surveyed saying they had used inhalants within the past year.
While use among boys appeared to drop slightly, however, from 4.6 percent in 2002 to 4.2 percent in 2005, use among girls increased from 4.1 percent in 2002 to 4.9 percent in 2005.
Harvey Weiss, the executive director of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition in Chattanooga, Tenn., said in an interview that had noticed in other reports that girls appeared to be abusing inhalants as much as boys, “but it just seemed not to be getting the attention that it ought to.”
The study, released March 15, also indicates that girls appear to be abusing substances different from those abused by boys. It found that 34.9 percent of girls who abused inhalants used glue, shoe polish, or toluene, a solvent found in nail-polish remover, compared with 25.8 percent of boys.
The study found boys were more likely than girls to have used nitrous oxide, or “whippets,” to get high; 29 percent of boys reported using that method, compared with 19 percent of girls.

From Education Week

Video news report on huffing

2007-02-28T11:24:00.000Z

Parent 2 Parent: The Dangers Of Huffing Chemicals

See video and full report

It’s a dangerous form of drug abuse and one that affects younger teens. In this Parent 2 Parent report, the dangers and warning signs of huffing. This salt lake teenager is currently in treatment for alcohol and inhalant abuse. He began inhaling chemicals, or huffing, when he was 13-years-old. Doctors say that’s the age most teens begin.“If you look at surveys among youth in American, 8th graders have the most use across the board,” says Scott Whittle, M.D. with Wasatch Canyons Treatment Center. We talked to a teen who deals with permanent damage to his vision, a result of huffing for several months and doesn’t think he could survive any more abuse.“I’ll seriously die if I huff again, I’m serious,” he says. Huffing is a dangerous form of drug abuse. Even after one attempt, a user can have a fatal reaction. Other consequences include:
Memory loss
Spasms
Brain damage
Kidney damage.
Doctors say kids may try it because it’s cheap and materials such as chemicals, gasoline and glue can be easily obtained in the home. Signs parents can look for:
Paint stains around the mouth or nose
Chemical smell
Drunk or dazed appearance
And rapidly declining grades
“There will be a dramatic decline in academic functioning. You don’t do well in school while you’re inhaling,” says Dr. Whittle. Help and recovery is possible, but if parents notice these signs, they should seek treatment for their child as soon as possible.“If a parent finds it,” says Dr. Whittle, “they should absolutely bring their child to treatment and they should do it right away.”“I’d say don’t do it. it gets really freaking addicting,” There are more than 1,000 everyday household products being abused by kids.

'Huffing' Outcry Prompts YouTube to Clarify Policy

2007-02-07T10:18:00.000Z

Feb. 6, 2007 — When Doug Fisher wrote a letter in December to YouTube ripping the video-sharing Web site for corporate irresponsibility, the New Jersey assemblyman didn't expect to hear back.
A series of YouTube videos featuring teens abusing inhalants crossed a line for the legislator, who has tried to make "huffing" a key issue in the New Jersey state legislature.
"Inhalant abuse is a growing phenomenon with kids from 12 to 14," Fisher said in an interview with ABCNEWS.com. "And it's the kids who are watching YouTube, not the parents."
Fisher introduced legislation last year that would ban the sale of keyboard cleaner, a common inhalant, to anyone under the age of 18. He also has heard from concerned constituents and visited schools where administrators — many of them from middle schools — describe a rise in the use of chemical-based substances to get high.
"Middle school has always been the age for the primary use of inhalants," said Harvey Weiss, director of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition. "These are legal products they can find in their house or their school. And many parents feel like their children won't use inhalants, so they don't talk to their kids about them."
Learning How to 'Huff'
Inhalants broadly include any substance that gives off toxic chemical vapors. When inhaled, these products can induce a mind-altered state. The abuse of inhalants, known as huffing, can attack the central nervous system and can quickly lead to heart failure.
The age group with the greatest percentage of inhalant use — more than 17 percent — is eighth graders, according to a 2005 survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Seeing video clips of the potentially deadly behavior just a mouse click away pushed Fisher to act.
"The videos posted by YouTube users instruct and demonstrate how to abuse inhalants to the many millions of people viewing them," Fisher wrote in a Dec. 18 letter. "YouTube has a responsibility to remove any video showing the abuse of inhalants to ensure that it does not promote this inappropriate behavior among younger users that view the material."
Late last month, Fisher received a surprising response. YouTube was heeding to his demand.
In the Jan. 22 letter, Micah Schaffer, a senior specialist for YouTube's consumer operations group, informed Fisher that the Web site, in response to his letter, would change their "Community Guidelines" page to more explicitly restrict video clips featuring all types of drug abuse, including inhalants.
Currently, there is a bullet on that page that reads: "Don't post videos showing dangerous or illegal acts, like animal abuse or bomb-making."
"Since your letter brought this issue to our attention, this week we will be adding 'drug abuse' as one of the examples in our Community Guidelines," Schaffer wrote.
While Fisher said the YouTube letter is a start, he's not totally satisfied with the response just yet.
YouTube's Community Guidelines page has not been updated to reflect the promised drug abuse restriction. A search for the terms "huffing" and "marijuana" produced a range of results — some innocuous, some suggestive and some seemingly blatant examples of drug abuse.

In one clip entitled "Freon," described by the poster as "me hittin' on some freon," a young teenager, apparently dizzy and disoriented, falls to the ground in his backyard. Freon is a common aerosol propellant that can be used as an inhalant.
YouTube Policies Questioned
Fisher also criticized YouTube's policy, described in Schaffer's letter, of allowing Web site users to monitor the content — the same policy used by eBay and Craigslist. If visitors to the site have a problem with a specific clip, they can flag the content. A team of YouTube administrators then investigates the flagged material.
To Fisher, the company has the resources to monitor the material more thoroughly itself. He cited YouTube's multibillion dollar sale to Google, and the search engine giant's huge profits.
"They know they can afford to put 100 people on staff to answer these flagged videos," Fisher said. "You can't say 'we don't have a department,' or 'we're overwhelmed.'"
A company spokesman would not say how many YouTube staff members are assigned to monitor flagged content, but did say that the questionable clips are looked at around the clock.
Clips featuring drug abuse have always violated the Web site's terms of use, the spokesman said.
"We are fully aware these videos are inappropriate," the spokesman said. "We have always worked to remove this content once we are notified of it."
While YouTube may be legally protected by the terms of use, the issue does raise questions about Internet regulations, something that YouTube has grown accustomed to. Just last week, Viacom requested that 100,000 clips from its various networks be removed from the site.
"Law is developing for the Internet, but of course, the Internet is not like broadcast television and radio," said Christine A. Corcos, an associate professor of law at Louisiana State University. "You just can't pick up the law from the regulated industries and apply it to the Internet."
Corcos, who edits a media law blog, said that regardless of a site like YouTube's monitoring policies and terms of use, there so many clips being posted that constantly enforcing them becomes an impossibility. "Some of these sites seem uncontrolled because people upload material on them at a wild pace."
In December, Weiss, the advocate for the dangers of inhalants, found out just how hard it is for site visitors to continually monitor YouTube postings.
Weiss e-mailed the 9,000 members of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition, asking them to comb through YouTube for huffing clips and request the content be stripped from the Web site — per policy.
He said that while some of the clips were pulled by YouTube, others were not, and with 100,000 clips added to the site daily, new videos featuring the drug abuse emerged.
The clips, Weiss said, continue to anger him.
"In a lot of ways, it glamorizes huffing," he said. "It shows people that there's no consequences."

taken from ABC News

New Jersey to make VSA illegal

2007-02-05T13:46:00.000Z

TRENTON, New Jersey Inhaling fumes from Dust-Off, paint remover, and whipped cream cans will be considered illegal under a new law recently signed by Gov. Jon S. Corzine.
Assemblymen Douglas Fisher and John J. Burzichelli sponsored the legislation in an attempt to crack down on the inhalation of euphoria-inducing chemicals, commonly known as huffing.

At the legislators' requests, the operators of YouTube.com, a Web site that hosts videos, have agreed to remove videos that document the use of inhalants.
"Nine out of 10 parents have no idea their kids are doing this," Fisher said Friday. "One out of four kids abuse inhalants. That's a very high number."
By allowing people to post videos of kids inhaling the toxic chemicals, the operators of YouTube.com are encouraging the inhalant abuse, Fisher said.
"YouTube is sort of like anarchy in a sense that everyone puts up anything they want and they don't monitor it because they get 100,000 videos a day," Fisher said. "They're making it more acceptable. Adults are thinking one way and the kids are thinking, This is cool.'"
Fisher said he and Burzichelli have supported the legislation for nearly a year and are working with schools and drug educational groups to inform children and parents about the risk of inhalants.
Under the new law, nitrous oxide and any glue, paint remover or chemicals with intoxicating fumes are defined as toxic chemicals under the state's illegal drug laws. The list of paraphernalia is also expanded to include objects associated with inhalant abuse such as compressed gas containers, tubes and bags.
Use or possession of a toxic chemical for purposes of huffing will be considered a disorderly person's offense, punishable by up to six months in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Those found in possession of a toxic chemical with the intent to distribute or manufacture a chemical drug could receive up to 18 months in jail and a $10,000 fine.
"Dust-Off is probably the worst one," Fisher said, referring to the aerosol chemical that cleans computer keyboards. "Everyone thinks it's just canned air, but you could die after the first time."
As many as one in five students in America has intentionally abused a common household product to get high before reaching eighth grade, according to the Alliance of Consumer Education.
Statistics also show that inhalants are the fifth-most-abused substance after alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and prescription drug misuse among high school students.
"I've talked to people in shelters where they said inhalants abuse was their first drug of choice," Fisher said. "Because they're household products and so readily available, it needs to be monitored."
Fisher advises parents to become educated about the warning signs, and to also visit YouTube.com to "begin to understand."
"It's such a new medium that no one is really paying any attention," he said.
The Web site operators also told Fisher that it will add "drug abuse" as one of the examples of what sort of videos are unacceptable on the site.

By Jessica Beymjbeym@sjnewsco.com
taken from the Gloucester County Times

Huffing: Tales of trouble

2007-01-11T14:58:00.000Z

Justin Conner's vehicle bears the scars of a run-in with a utility pole. Conner, 17, Dorchester, and a passenger, Stefan Sova, 16, Staplehurst, sustained injuries in the collision. Both teens were abusing inhalants, or "huffing," at the time.

by Stephanie Croston
Although it may not seem dangerous, huffing can be fatal.

Seward County has seen at least three vehicle accidents within the past two months in which the teens involved were huffing. Huffing involves spraying an aerosol product into the mouth and inhaling.

The first accident involving teens who were huffing happened Nov. 21 when a vehicle drove into the front of Hall of Cards in downtown Seward.

The second happened Dec. 22 between 6 and 6:30 p.m. at the fairgrounds. Justin Conner, 17, of Dorchester was driving that car after huffing for the first time.

"It gives a high and a buzz," Conner said.

Despite that, he felt in control. But he doesn't remember hitting the power pole at the fairgrounds, saying he blacked out.

"We hit so hard, it knocked down power lines," he said.

Conner's jaw hit the steering wheel and his head hit the windshield. Everything in the car shifted to the right upon impact.

Stefan Sova, 16, of Staplehurst was one of the three passengers in the vehicle. He said he had been huffing for a couple months after a friend convinced him to try it. He had also blacked out just before impact.

"I woke up to (my friend) screaming, 'We're going to hit the pole,'" he said.

Sova said his seat unlocked and went forward. He ended up with a broken rib and punctured lung. Both Conner and Sova were wearing seat belts.

Sova said the buzz gives a person a "wierd feeling." For him, his voice deepened, sounds echoed and lights popped in his eyes. When he turned his head, he saw a "freeze-frame effect" where images blurred across his vision.

The effect lasts five to 10 minutes, but Sova said it's not addictive.

"When I look back, it's kind of dumb," he said. "It's cheap and easy."

The Seward rescue squad took Sova to the emergency room, where he was treated by Drs. Hank Newburn and Barbara Froehner.

Inhaling an aerosol product may have other consequences, too. "It could freeze your tongue if it's too close," Conner said.

"Doctors say it could mess you up later and give you mini-strokes," Sova said.

Sova said his friends have stopped huffing, and he won't do it again.

"It's not worth it," he said.

Conner gave the same warning.

"Don't do it," Conner said. "It messes with your brain."

Taken from SCI Online