No hangover, no illicit purchases and a guaranteed high for just a few euros. Eight years ago, Côme discovered nitrous oxide during an evening of his engineering training. The principle is simple: by inhaling small capsules of this gas, initially used in medicine as an analgesic or in the kitchen to make whipped cream, students are overwhelmed with uncontrollable laughter and an immediate feeling of well-being. Very quickly, its use becomes common in the evenings when the apprentice designer goes. “I remember that everyone liked it. We played specific music: in the chorus we all inhaled our capsule at the same time. Some did not react, others laughed, others fell to the ground …”, says the young man, now 27 years old. He himself started buying directly from medical students, or through online retail sites like Amazon. “I bought it in packs of 25, between 50 and 100 cartridges for one night. But instead of using it in the kitchen, we breathed it in the balloons, it was a school frenzy,” he explains. him, assuring that he had completely stopped his consumption by the end of his studies.
In a few years, silver capsules and colored balloons have, for their part, more than thrived. According to a study of the Smerep student loan, nitrous oxide even ranked third among the drugs most consumed by students at the end of 2018: 6% of them had already inhaled it, compared to 20% for cannabis and 7% for poppers. “Everyone takes it. It’s become normal,” says Juliette *, a 19-year-old medical student. For a year, the young woman even participated in collective orders between girlfriends, buying gas in batches of 500 or 600 capsules on a site specializing in kitchen accessories. “A batch of 360 doses costs 119 euros,” she says, now preferring to inhale “about fifteen capsules a night” rather than drinking alcohol. Faced with the exponential demand of consumers, the “proto” is no longer sold only under the coat among students or on specific pastry sites. “We use a classic site, but I know you can also get it on Snapchat, for example,” says Juliette.
“Deluxe” editions and deliveries on Snapchat
On this instant messaging application, dozens of accounts showing balloon emojis offer to deliver laughing gas capsules or balloons for just a few euros anywhere in France. “No need to travel anymore to make your party crazier!”, For example, promises one of these accounts with many colorful slogans, whose delivery people are “available from 18:00 to 3:00” in the weekdays and “6:00 pm to 5:00 am on weekends” in Montpellier. While a law was enacted June 1, 2021 aimed at “preventing the dangerous uses of nitrous oxide”, it has in particular established a ban on selling or offering this product to minors, whatever its packaging, in all shops, public places and on the Internet – under penalty of 3750 euros -, any Internet user can thus obtain supplies through a retailer on social networks, without any verification of their identity or age. “It’s like hashish, cocaine, or even health subscriptions in the days of Covid: as soon as there is a strong demand, or a legal difficulty in obtaining a product, you will find retailers on social networks to take advantage of it. And in ten minutes on Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp or Telegram, you can have almost everything you are looking for delivered to your home, “Yann Bastière, national delegate SGP Unit Police, explains to L’Express.
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On various Internet sites specializing in the resale of nitrous oxide, marketing goes even further. The demijohns of all colors, which can be purchased in whole pallets, are thus sold to consumers as “exceptional products”, with increasingly sought-after names: “Gold” edition whose purity would have been tested at “99.9%”, “Midnight” edition for “long summer nights, for night owls, for unforgettable moments until dawn”, “Maxxi 20000” for two-kilo cans .. On some platforms, the sale of “proto” also comes in various accessories, ranging from the bag that allows you to “take your charger to any setting or event” to bottles of blueberry, banana or strawberry aromas to “deliciously flavored balloons”. So many promises, far from targeting the chefs specialized in Chantilly cream, then. “But this iconography and this professional marketing are destructive, because they seduce young people already conquered by the playful and festive vision of the product”, regrets Dr. Guillaume Gzrych, metabolic biochemist at the Lille university hospital and founder of a specialized care sector for the victims of nitrous oxide in the Hauts-de-France region.
Since becoming interested in the subject, the doctor has seen almost everything. “We found cylinders with the retailer’s Snapchat messaging QR code inlaid, to advise them directly. We have some that certify that the gas is actually halal or vegan, others with colored straps to carry them, still others that go up to six kilos … “, He despairs. While on the networks, laughing gas is becoming more and more common.” There are reality TV stars or footballers who take videos while inhaling balloons, or teenagers who challenge each other to ‘balloon’ in the car, during a break or in front of college, “says Dr. Gzrych, who recalls the” extremely serious “consequences of taking this product for health.” It can range from simple tremors and loss of consciousness to paralysis of some limbs, disorders orientation or thrombosis. And in Hauts-de-France, reports of serious cases have quadrupled in three years. “Second a study by ANSES and ANSM published in November 2021, as many as 388 cases of nitrous oxide poisoning were also reported to Poison Control Centers (CAP) and Drug Addiction Assessment and Information Centers (CEIP-A) in 2020 – versus only 93 cases in 2019.
Organized traffic and international network
However, the impact on public health doesn’t seem to restrict traffic or cool retailers – quite the opposite. On the Internet, some sites even offer customers the opportunity to purchase “wholesale” large quantities of nitrous oxide – for example, we count 609.99 euros for 24 cans of 615 grams – often shipped from abroad. “The explosion in demand has recently led to a professionalization of traffickers: nitrous oxide is now at the center of organized traffic and an international network is developing”, reports the police information and communication service (Sicop) in L ‘Express. In recent months, the authorities have also recorded “a series of armed robberies” aimed at the theft of nitrous oxide cartridges and cylinders. “We closely monitor this traffic, although it remains very difficult to establish a typical dealer profile. Generally the cylinders are in other cases, such as an armed robbery or a routine check.”
On August 7, the arrest of a scooter driver carrying six cylinders of laughing gas for refusing to obey led to the seizure, a few days later, of fifteen tons of nitrous oxide in the Paris region. According to the Nanterre prosecutor, “a Dutch delivery boy” came to deliver dozens of pallets of demijohns, representing several tons of product, in a box in Collégien (Seine-et-Marne). Seven tons of “proto” in Seine-et-Marne were also seized last January, while more than 1,500 containers were discovered a few weeks later in a disused parking lot in the Bourgogne district, in Tourcoing (Hauts-de-France). “We are faced with an organized network, whose structure is similar to that of drug trafficking networks, for a product whose use, initially legal, is totally deviated”, estimates Eric Denoeud, Deputy Mayor of Tourcoing in charge of prevention and access to rights. “But the main difficulty in this type of case is that nitrous oxide remains a legal product: it remains very difficult to convict users or possible resellers. We do everything possible on the basis of existing laws and decrees of the municipality.”
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Faced with this legal vacuum, local elected officials or various prosecutors are actually trying to adapt. The municipality of Tourcoing, for example, issued an ordinance in July 2021 aimed at purely and simply prohibiting the sale of cartridges containing nitrous oxide in all activities in the municipality, both for minors and adults. The Nanterre Public Prosecutor’s Office has chosen to prosecute the trafficking of this gas as “trafficking in poisonous substances”: as required by the public health code, retailers could thus be sentenced to a fine of up to € 375,000 and a five-year prison term. In Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis), the prosecution is trying to prosecute suspects on the basis of the notion of hidden work. “We have laid the foundations and defined a first framework to regulate the consumption of nitrous oxide, but it is still far from sufficient”, estimates Valérie Létard, senator from the North at the origin of the bill adopted on 1 June 2021. “We are currently evaluating a new version of this law, which would specifically make it possible to condemn sellers and misuse of the product, getting as close as possible to the legislation that regulates drugs,” he told L’Express. “Given the explosion in consumption and the extent of traffic, it was necessary”.
