Menace of drivers high on hippy crack: More and more people are being killed by cars whose drivers have inhaled laughing gas at the wheel. And as this disturbing investigation reveals, one community is particularly blighted... | Retrui News | Retrui
Menace of drivers high on hippy crack: More and more people are being killed by cars whose drivers have inhaled laughing gas at the wheel. And as this disturbing investigation reveals, one community is particularly blighted...
SOURCE:Daily Mail
The past few years has seen a huge increase in the number of drug-driving cases involving nitrous oxide.
Around midnight on June 6 last year, when the Islamic festival Eid was being celebrated in Tower Hamlets, east London, a black BMW with tinted windows spun wildly out of control, mounted the kerb on Cotton Street and crashed into the pedestrian barriers with enough force to snap the metal from its concrete foundations.
With shrapnel strewn across the Tarmac and traffic at a standstill, a man climbed out of the driver’s seat, hood up and eyes down. In his hand was a black balloon almost certainly containing nitrous oxide, more commonly known as ‘Nos’ or laughing gas. He threw the balloon back into the car before escaping uneasily on foot, in footage released online and first reported by news website London Centric.
When the Daily Mail visited the scene of the crash six months on, 47-year-old Vas – who walks down Cotton Street to work each day – tells us: ‘I don’t even notice anymore when a driver round here is sucking on one of those balloons. But I do walk as far from the road as possible because they’re out of control – it’s a death-trap. And not just for those in the cars.’
The past few years has seen a huge increase in the number of drug-driving cases involving nitrous oxide. And many have taken place in areas with large South Asian populations such as Tower Hamlets, which has the highest number of Muslim residents in England and Wales at 40 per cent.
While laughing gas is not restricted to any one demographic, Alastair Noyce – professor of neurology at Queen Mary University of London – revealed that since 2022, 80 per cent of nitrous oxide admissions to his hospital, The London Bridge Hospital in central London, have been South Asian patients, the vast majority of them men.
Nos, it seems, has become the drug of choice for many young British South Asian Muslims who – according to one Imam – erroneously believe it not to be ‘haram’ or forbidden like alcohol under their religious code.
The result is a huge spike nationally, particularly around the most diverse parts of east London, Burnley, Manchester and Birmingham – where police seized £30,000 worth of nitrous oxide canisters in a raid on an industrial estate in December.
The past few years has seen a huge increase in the number of drug-driving cases involving nitrous oxide
Police seized £30,000 worth of nitrous oxide canisters in a raid on an industrial estate in Birmingham in December
On a street corner near the grand East London Mosque, in Tower Hamlets, five teenagers of South Asian heritage are chomping on fast food and cracking jokes, their large, branded, black puffer coats drawn up over their school uniforms.
‘How much do you want?’ one asks – to a chorus of laughs when we asked whether they knew where to buy laughing gas.
‘Laughing gas? Never heard of it,’ says another – who gave his name as Omir – causing a further riotous outburst from his mates.
It doesn’t take long to realise, walking down the Mile End Road and past Whitechapel Underground station, where Tube signs are written in Bengali, that in this corner of Tower Hamlets, nitrous oxide is as commonplace as fruity vapes and fizzy pop.
Chatting to us while being fitted for a new thobe (traditional Islamic dress) 38-year-old Michael, who lives in the borough, tells us: ‘It’s a major problem. I walk up this road most days and you’ll see young men behind the wheel with a balloon in their mouths, not caring, not trying to hide it.
‘It’s like they see it as a cool thing. It makes them feel stronger than they are and they show off.’
Imam Dr Taj Hargey from the Oxford Institute of British Islam explains: ‘There are two main reasons why young Muslim men are going into drugs and all types of antisocial behaviour. One is political, and the other is religious.
‘First these young people are disenfranchised, alienated and disaffected with British society. Many of them don’t finish school. They don’t go on to college or get further training. And they end up a shelf stacker or Uber driver.
‘Secondly, the Imams don’t talk about what really matters to them. Many come from Pakistan or Egypt, and they have the “old country” mentality which has no relevance, no pertinence to a young Muslim born in Burnley, Blackburn or Birmingham.
‘And when you have sermons that don’t talk about issues that matter, the youth are going to be switched off. And instead, they’re going to be switched on by laughing gas, nitrous oxide, weed and other drugs.’
Nos has been a major problem in Tower Hamlets for several years. In 2023, the council started a scheme called ‘Know the Risk’ which sought to educate young people on the dangers of the drug.
‘Tower Hamlets has led the way with campaigns to educate people about the dangers of its use, and to tackle issues connected to it such as antisocial behaviour and littering,’ said a spokesman.
However, for some, the message simply isn’t getting through. Afrobeats singer Adekunle Gold, known as ‘Big Fish’ – who posts videos about living in Tower Hamlets – warns the number of ‘balloon smackheads’ in the borough has ‘blown up’ over recent years.
More than 1,000 residents have signed a petition calling for action on the number of ‘drivers visibly using nitrous oxide’.
Fatalities linked to laughing gas remain an issue across the country – and are not exclusively confined to any one community.
Grandmother Helen Klich, 67, retired from a 25-year career in the NHS just six days before she was killed in a car crash in Staffordshire by a driver high on Nos in December 2023.
Thomas Johnson, 19, crashed his car in Oxfordshire while high on the drug, killing three teenage passengers in June of the same year. And more recently in February last year, 28-year-old Arran Donnelly lost control of his vehicle in Stockport after inhaling Nos, killing his sole passenger Ryan Evans, aged 27.
Thomas Johnson's wrecked car after he crashed it in Oxfordshire while high on laughing gas, killing three teenage passengers
Elliott Pullen was one of three passengers killed when Thomas Johnson crashed his car after inhaling nitrous oxide
In September last year Baroness Caroline Pidgeon warned in the House of Lords that a ‘serious increase’ in drivers under the influence of Nos represented a ‘deadly danger’ to public safety.
To make matters worse, police and crime commissioner of the West Midlands, Simon Foster, has admitted that ‘it’s a greater challenge’ to catch those using Nos, rather than other drugs or alcohol, behind the wheel. ‘I don’t think there is a test that can be used as there can, for example, in relation to a breathalyser or blood test for drug use,’ he declared.
But what makes this latest surge in the recreational use of Nos all the more frustrating is that authorities promised to get a grip of the problem back in 2023 when the gas was made a Class C illegal drug.
Since then, numbers have continued to surge. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests 3.3 per cent of people aged between 16 and 24 used the drug in the year ending March 2024.
More than a quarter of that age group believed they could obtain the drug easily within 24 hours. And just last November, Thames Valley Police announced a number of secure bins previously used for the disposal of lethal street knives would be repurposed for the disposal of Nos canisters, such is the seriousness of the problem.
Laughing gas – colloquially known as ‘hippy crack’ – has many legal and practical uses, from being used as a pain-killer to a pressure agent in whipped cream. But for as long as it has been used in industry, it has also been used recreationally.
Indeed, as far back as the early 19th century, the British upper classes were hosting ‘laughing parties’ during which Nos was pumped into small rooms for a communal high. But the epidemic of the drug’s use today is very different – and much more deadly.
It was back in 2010 that Prince Harry was allegedly pictured inhaling Nos from a balloon at a fancy-dress party in Dulwich, south London, and the sight of small discarded silver canisters became ubiquitous across urban streets.
Fast forward 16 years, however, and today’s young male users typically decant the highly addictive drug from industrial-sized cannisters into party balloons, inhaling vast quantities at a time.
The effects are almost instantaneous, with an immediate high and a sense of invincibility followed by dizziness, fits of giggles and a total loss of inhibition.
However, since the high lasts no more than a few minutes, Nos has developed a reputation as safe compared to other street drugs.
Of course, this is far from the truth, with long-term side-effects including seizures, heart failure, the loss of limb function, tinnitus, erectile dysfunction and – in some tragic cases – hypoxia, in which the brain is starved of oxygen leading to an agonising death.
No wonder then that, in 2023, consultant neurologist Dr David Nicholls took over the Sandwell and Birmingham West Hospital NHS trust TikTok account to warn young people: ‘We as doctors are seeing people come to hospital off their legs, with tingling, numbness in the hands and feet, difficulty walking, maybe getting psychosis.
‘I even know of an eye doctor that’s seen people who have lost vision because they’re not getting enough oxygen to the brain,’ he continued. ‘I know of male patients who have been unable to sustain arousal because of a spinal cord injury from nitrous oxide use.’
Tragically, since the neurologist’s warning, the list of Nos-related deaths has only climbed. Just three months ago, 20-year-old Amy Leonard, from Bolton, died after suffering a cardiac arrest caused by Nos inhalation. Shockingly, just four days before she died, Amy had filmed herself in the back of an ambulance being rushed to hospital having overdosed on the gas, warning others not to follow her downward spiral into addiction.
Elsewhere, Mustafa Hameed started the Salik Project UK in Greater Manchester to help South Asian families battling with addiction through education and support.
‘The earliest signs were the small silver bulbs littered on streets and dumped from cars,’ Mustafa tells the Daily Mail from his Rochdale headquarters. ‘What really raised alarm was seeing them near schools and youth spaces, which suggested use by school-age children.
‘Earlier this year, we went out in Rochdale and collected eleven [industrial-sized] canisters in under an hour. What began largely as a party drug has clearly moved into wider, everyday use and has reached a younger demographic,’ he adds.
Just as in Tower Hamlets, Mustafa quickly discovered that this was a drug being disproportionately abused by Britain’s South Asian community.
As one 19-year-old lad from Rochdale told him: ‘The elders [South Asian parents] don’t know what it is. You can hide it in your room or your car. It doesn’t smell like weed, leaves no trace and if they ask, you say it’s for cars [as a fuel booster].’
After a pause, Mustafa continues, sombrely: ‘A few months ago, we had the case of a young lad, aged 18, who was left with significant spine and head injuries and ended up in a coma for nearly a month after [being a passenger] in a crash. The driver fled the scene, but it’s known that many of the youngsters were inhaling nitrous oxide.
‘Drug-use data relies on people engaging with services,’ Mustafa concludes, ‘but stigma in South Asian communities means many families don’t seek help until situations become severe – if at all.’
Further north, the Daily Mail spoke with the Imam of Burnley’s central mosque, Abd Al-Rahman, who shares the same concerns.
‘It is very difficult once you are addicted to it,’ he says. ‘It is one of many issues in the community. We try and raise awareness here in the mosque. I know of someone personally who has physically been impacted. He has been diagnosed with an illness caused by laughing gas. He just cannot get off it.’
One local Muslim woman, who lives near the Burnley mosque but who did not wish to be named, says: ‘It happens in the area. Typically, in the quiet side streets where you get a low police presence. It’s the younger people. It’s a craze and it’s been going on for a few months.’
Looking over her shoulder, the lady continues: ‘My mum lives five minutes down the road and you get loads of canisters there.’
What has become clear over the course of the Daily Mail’s investigation is that the resurgence in popularity of laughing gas is a national problem – albeit particularly among a certain demographic – and one which changes to drug legislation have done little to remedy.
The latest generation to indulge in nitrous oxide will learn in time quite how dangerous it can be. But the question no doubt now is how many fatalities will there be before the laughing stops?