Demand for clampdown on gas sale
TO BE SELLING LAUGHING GAS
CHILDREN can buy ‘laughing gas’ canisters at corner shops in Manchester, have them delivered over the phone or buy them online on sites such as Amazon with just a few clicks.
A 16-year-old boy was handed canisters of Nitrous Oxide – known as laughing gas or nos – by a delivery man, no questions asked, after ordering them using his own details on Amazon, a BBC investigation revealed.
Two shops out of 10 in south Manchester which were visited were found to be selling the containers of the drug and were filmed doing so in secretlyrecorded footage.
Undercover reporters were also able to have boxes of canisters delivered in under two hours after calling Boltonbased Speedy Whipped Creams.
The canisters can be legally sold – for instance they are used as chargers of whipped cream dispensers.
Laws introduced in 2016 made it illegal to sell the gas, which is decanted into balloons before being inhaled for ‘psychoactive’ purposes.
In a statement, Speedy Whipped Creams said: “We do not sell laughing gas – we sell cream chargers. If we’d known the customer intended to use the product as a drug, we would not have delivered it.”
However, academics say despite the change in the law the number of people using it as a recreational drug has remained roughly unchanged, with around half a million people said to have used it last year alone.
In the joint probe by North West Tonight and BBC Radio Manchester, the 16-year-old boy agreed to carry out a test purchase and ordered canisters using an Amazon account set in the boy’s name, using his email and debit card.
Amazon said in response a message on the advert said the product wasn’t for sale to under-18s but the boy’s parents say that is completely ineffective because no proof of age was needed at any stage. They said in a statement: “Product pages for age-constrained items highlight that they are for over 18s only, and we state clearly on our website that users of amazon.co.uk must be 18 or older or accompanied by a parent or guardian.” The drug was said to have been linked to five deaths last year. And the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North West, Nazir Afzal, said the law was ‘simply not working’ and was failing to disrupt the supply.
He said: “We’ve got many instances of people who have suffered serious harm and death because they’ve used, misused and abused what it is you’ve purchased.”
He called for the sale of nitrous oxide to be licensed to make it ‘much more rigorous, rather than what it currently is – a complete free-for-all.’ Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor