A worrying success. For the past two years, “laughing gas” has experienced a real boom, especially in certain evenings where it is inhaled by consumers in search of its euphoric effects. While the use of nitrous oxide was very marginal in the 1990s, this gas is now the subject of “organized trafficking”, assures the deputy spokesman for the judicial police, William Hippert.
The reason is partly economic. The small metal cartridge of “proto” as it is called, costs only fifty euro cents. Count “25 euros for a liter bottle”, reports William Hippert. In the evening, the gas is sold by traffickers in balloons “between 5 and 10 euros”, reports the agent, specifying that “400 balloons can be made with one liter”. You don’t have to be a great mathematician to see what the retail sale of this gas can bring. According to the deputy spokesperson, the prototype is sold “at the points of deals with narcotics and contraband cigarettes”.
Fifteen tons of gas seized
For criminals, the financial windfall is too attractive. William Hippert cites the thefts and robberies of trucks containing several tons of products, as in Sarcelles at the end of January where six criminals had seized 2,000 cylinders with a market value of 28,000 euros.
There are now channels as evidenced by the operation carried out last November in Toulouse where the police seized more than two tonnes of product imported from the Netherlands. An investigation, carried out last year from September to December, led to the dismantling of a network between France and the Netherlands. Eleven tons of “proto” had been seized in the Lyon and Paris regions. Over the past nine months, fifteen tons have been seized by the police.
A new offense around this gas
Until last June, nitrous oxide was sold to the general public. But faced with the expansion of its consumption and its dangerousness, the government banned its sale to minors and restricted the quantities for sale. “An offense for provocation to misuse” of this product has been established, but there are “rather few prosecutions for trafficking”, underlines William Hippert.
Nitrous oxide is classified as a “poisonous substance”. It is used in cooking for whipped cream siphons and in medicine as an analgesic. It is its misuse that has made it popular with young people. It has “an instantaneous effect: laughter, a laughter that cannot be curbed”. But, underlines William Hippert, “it is addictive. It has an action on the brain, can lead to asphyxiation, neurological and cardiological disorders”.