The politics of drinking
             November 25, 2024

Folk devils and nitrous oxide

This article first appeared in the Propel Info newsletter on March 31, 2023

The government has announced a ban on nitrous oxide. It extended the current law against supply to one of possession of a substance that was known as laughing gas when my childhood dentist used to knock me out with it before performing unspeakable acts on my gums. And on the streets today, known simply as “nos”.

The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) was quick to welcome the news. Chief executive Michael Kill cited a “long-standing battle with the sale and use of this drug”, with problems including anti-social behaviour and organised crime as well as littering. The latter makes nitrous oxide use especially visible in the form of the small silvery canisters that are discarded once the gas has been decanted into a balloon for inhaling.

No doubt late-night operators are at the sharp end of this, and under pressure from the police. There’s no question either that recreational use has escalated over the last couple of years. Up to a million people, mostly 16 to 24-year-olds, are now believed to be partaking. It does mystify me though how anyone could imagine banning it will achieve anything – apart from making the situation worse, as drug and alcohol prohibition invariably does.

Charities that work with drug users are worried about the impact of criminalising possession, and the government has ignored its own team of experts, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which recommended that it should not go ahead with the ban.

Everyone will be concerned about the harmful effects of excessive use of nitrous oxide, but that goes for the excessive use of almost anything, including alcohol. And you’ve got to inhale a lot of “nos” before it does any damage. According to Professor Harry Sumnall of the Public Health Institute, doing yourself serious harm involves consuming “hundreds of canisters” in a week and repeating that over a period of “several weeks or months”.

It would surely make more sense to tackle these extreme users. For the vast majority of those found in possession, a criminal conviction will bring far greater harms than what they’re inhaling. And we know, or should know by now, prohibition rather than squashing organised crime plays into its hands, creating an illicit market for fresh exploitation.

That’s what happened when the United States prohibited the alcohol trade 100 years ago, and it’s what is happening around illicit drugs today. Criminalising one more substance isn’t going to help.

Nor does it make it easier to deal with the underlying issues. We need to be able to talk to people about the dangers of excessive use, and that’s hard when you’ve just made them criminals. And if you deny the market for nitrous oxide, you make it harder to regulate and control it – by banning the larger canisters that are appearing which encourage excess, for instance. 

There are already laws against anti-social behaviour, and if the police aren’t enforcing them, giving them an extra job to do is going to make it less like they will. As for littering, how about more bins and a bit of encouragement for a younger generation already environmentally aware that they should use them. Except you’ve just criminalised them.

One particular problem with outlawing nitrous oxide is that it has so many uses beyond recreation, not only in medicine but in food manufacture, aerosols and rocket science. Making sure this can continue will be a major challenge for legislators, involving heaps of red tape.

So why is the government doing this? Like most drug and alcohol policy, it’s political. And in this case, I’d argue, blatantly so. The Tories are facing defeat at the next election and are looking for simple populist measures that allow them to say they’re taking firm action when, in reality, bans like this achieve nothing and risk making matters worse.

Strictly defined, moral panics like this involve targeting and stigmatising a section of the population. The full title of Stanley Cohen’s 1972 original study of the phenomenon is Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Then, the devils were mods and rockers. Today, it’s “nos” users. In the 2000s, it was binge-drinkers on alcopops. All youth sub-cultures construed as a threat to civilisation, whatever that might be.

For those in the business of selling alcohol, it’s worth noting that governments typically seek to curb these problematic behaviours through regulating the substances these “devils” use, rather than addressing the complex roots of the issue and implementing proper solutions that are invariably difficult and expensive.

Phil Mellows, March 31, 2023

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