Exposed: the firm hiring ‘Gas Girls’... to sell deadly ‘Hippy Crack’ to your kids
‘WASTED’ TEENS TARGETED ON PARTY ISLE WITH ILLEGAL HIGH
A BRITISH company is brazenly recruiting teenagers as ‘gas girls’ to sell a potentially deadly drug nicknamed ‘hippy crack’ in holiday islands across the Mediterranean, a Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal.
It is illegal to sell nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, for recreational use in many European countries, including Britain where it contributed to the deaths of eight people last year.
Yet Lancashire-based PlayaWay Abroad lures hundreds of young people fresh from end-of-year exams to sell ‘hippy crack’ in Spanish and Greek holiday resorts, promising recruits in an online advert that they ‘will spend most of your working hours laughing.’
But, in a dire warning that will send shivers down the spines of parents preparing to wave off teenagers heading to sun-kissed resorts to celebrate the completion of exams, medical experts said the substance can cause serious damage and even death, particularly when combined with alcohol.
Posing as a potential ‘gas girl’ recruit in the popular Cretan resort of Malia, our undercover reporter exposed PlayaWay Abroad staff who:
When asked if sellers should check the age of customers, replied: ‘No, it’s Malia’;
Encouraged our reporter to sell gas to customers even if they were ‘wasted’;
Told her that she could sell ‘unlimited’ amounts of the gas;
Claimed the law surrounding nitrous oxide was a ‘grey area’ when in fact it is illegal to sell it for recreational use.
PlayaWay, an employment agency run by 31-year-old businessman Rick Dawson from Colne, Burnley, targets young people seeking a working holiday in one of six resorts: Malia and Zante in Greece, Ayia Napa in Cyprus and Magaluf, Ibiza and Tenerife in Spain.
Under the jobs section of the firm’s website, which features photographs and videos of smiling, suntanned youngsters, is a section labelled ‘Laughing Gas Crew’ with hours from 11pm to 5am and pay from 20 to 80 euros a night. Despite the season not yet being in full flow, we found Malia’s bars and clubs rammed with teenagers as young as 16. Many were already drunk by the time they started buying balloons filled with nitrous oxide from scantily-clad ‘gas girls’.
Shouting above the deafening music, one vendor – not employed by PlayaWay – boasted of selling nine balloons to a holidaymaker who promptly inhaled them one after another. ‘It’s up to them. I don’t really care,’ she replied when asked if she had been worried.
Jodie, a 17-year-old girl from Scotland who recently finished her Highers, had already spent 100 euros on the balloons, priced at five euros for two.
‘You can do about 20 in a night and you don’t get a hangover,’ she said.
Our reporter was ‘interviewed’ by phone for the job by Dawson who showed a shameless disregard for the dangers of nitrous oxide.
Asked if she should ask for ID as proof of age, Dawson laughed: ‘No, not at all – it’s Malia! Trust me, if they’re allowed in the club, they’re allowed to do what they like.
‘They’re allowed to have alcohol and obviously laughing gas or whatever. That’s the security’s job, isn’t it?’
Asked if there was any limit to the number of balloons she could sell to an individual, he replied: ‘It’s unlimited, yeah’.
He urged our female reporter to charm male customers into buying balloons for her too.
‘You’ve got to get someone to buy one of them for you,’ he said.
‘That’s the idea. You go to a group of lads, “Oh, lads are you buying me one too?”’
Laughing, he said: ‘And you have one and you get commission for it!’ Asked if the sale of the balloons was legal, Dawson paused before saying: ‘It’s a grey area, that’s the best way to put it – like it is everywhere in the world. ‘But if you’re asking if you’re going to get in trouble, no.’ In fact,
‘They’re allowed to do what they like’