ファラディーを見出したDavyが笑気で遊んでいたという。香気と甘みのあるガスを吸入すると陶酔する。薬物を用いて笑いこげてはいけません。
歯科の治療に今でも用いているのか？
今回の事件は自転車タイヤへ充填するガスを装った危険ドラッグということか。ネコにマタタビとは違う。大半は窒息死ということらしい。ヘリウムガスでもどこかのTV局で失態があったばかりである。暑いから液体窒素を播くと涼しくなると考えて播いた大学院生と助手の死亡事件もあったね.........。
The UK government is moving to ban the sale of nitrous oxide to clubbers and partygoers because of its dangers, but some users are protesting that the move is unfair. Exactly how dangerous is the gas?
Empty silver canisters of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, have become a common sight outside clubs across the UK. Last July, more than 1,200 were reported to have been confiscated on just one Saturday night in London's Shoreditch.
The anaesthetic gas is still used for pain relief during dentistry and childbirth but outside of that legitimate arena there has been a legal grey area for years. It's already illegal to sell to under-18s if there is a risk they will inhale it. But it remains easy for adults to buy.
Mainstream online vendors advertise the product, although usually indicating that it is to be used for the production of whipped cream. The product reviews usually suggest otherwise. One reads:
"Quality product, I ordered on a Friday and chargers were meant to come on Tuesday but arrived on the next day, good laugh with mates at a festival… er, I mean in the kitchen whipping cream."
Now the UK government plans to include nitrous oxide in a bill which will make it illegal to sell "psychoactive substances". Possession - with no intent to supply - and use will remain legal.
"Young people who take these substances are taking exceptional risks with their health and those who profit from their sale have a complete disregard for the potential consequences,"
said crime and policing minister Mike Penning.
But some argue that the ban is unfair. On Saturday, protesters from the Psychedelic Society pressure group will inhale laughing gas outside Parliament.
"It's not the business of government to tell people what they can and can't use,"
says director Stephen Reid.
"Nitrous oxide has been used for literally hundreds of years in this country without any problems."
It was discovered in 1772 by British scientist Joseph Priestley and within 30 years the chemist Humphry Davy was using it recreationally.
Davy began inviting his friends round to inhale the gas from oiled silk bags and in doing so started a craze.
"The nitrous oxyd [sic], or laughing gas was inhaled by a gentleman who after laughing sprung up in the air to the astonishing height of six feet from the ground,"
wrote a correspondent in the Times in 1819, describing a popular stage show.
"You kind of feel that you're in a trance,"
says Reid.
"Some people get a sensation that they're falling or being lifted up into the sky perhaps. When you start coming out of this trance-like state you often get these giggles."
Recreational use of nitrous oxide has not always been common.
The controversial 1995 movie Kids shows one of the characters using it, but the popularity of the gas has increased dramatically in the past five years, says Stephen Ream, a director of drug charity Re-Solv.
Laughing gas and the philosopher
"[The 19th Century US philosopher] William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was: A smell of petroleum prevails throughout."
From A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell (1945)
Laughing gas is now the fourth most used drug in the UK, according to the Global Drug Survey 2015.
In the past year, only people in the Netherlands used it more.
In 2013-14, ![]()
some 470,000 people took nitrous oxide, according to the Home Office.
some 470,000 people took nitrous oxide, according to the Home Office. It's especially popular with young people, with 7.6% of 16 to 24-year-olds taking it that same year. This was a greater proportion than took cocaine (4.2%) and ecstasy (3.9%).
There have, however, been 17 fatalities related to the use of laughing gas in the UK between 2006 and 2012, according to research.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) says that there was one death in 2011 and five in 2010. The US records about 15 deaths a year.
In 2007, a 23-year-old man was found dead at his home in Birmingham next to a large cylinder of nitrous oxide.
A plastic bag was also found nearby, it was reported. The pathologist concluded that he had died from asphyxia due to inhaling the gas.
Others have also taken severe risks by using medical tanks and masks. But the majority of people who consume the gas, according to research, do so using balloons.
Most of the deaths in the UK have been asphyxiations窒息 involving plastic bags, says Dr John Ramsey, a toxicologist who was part of the team that helped compile the death data, using coroner's reports at St George's, University of London.
As well as the danger of asphyxiation, when the gas comes out of a canister it can be so cold it can burn. A cold shock at the back of the throat can affect the vagus nerve, causing the heart rate to suddenly slow.
Researchers say that the number of people who die from inhaling nitrous oxide is actually low when compared with the number of people taking the drug every year.
"There's been something like 40-odd deaths in the last 40 years. They're really rare,"
says Dr Adam Winstock, consultant psychiatrist and founder of the Global Drug Survey.
Death rates can be difficult to compare but in 2011 nitrous oxide was linked to one death - this was fewer than heroin and morphine (2,652), cocaine (112), ecstasy (13) and cannabis (seven).
The number of laughing gas deaths is fewer than those killed each year by helium, says David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, London and former UK government drugs adviser. He argues that laughing gas is actually "exceptionally safe" considering the numbers who use it.
"I mean you can kill yourself obviously. If you breathe nothing but nitrous for 10 minutes you will die, but I don't think there's any evidence that nitrous kills people if you use it recreationally."
The risk of brain damage just isn't worth it as far as I can tellDr Anna-Maria Rollin, Royal College of Anaesthetists
But to some critics, the dangers are clear. Breathing in high concentrations of laughing gas can quickly reduce the blood's level of oxygen.
On a night out, in an uncontrolled environment, there is a risk that people can start feeling sleepy as they inhale the gas and pass out, says Dr Anna-Maria Rollin from the Royal College of Anaesthetists.
"The risk of brain damage just isn't worth it as far as I can tell."
In March, doctors from the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital in Brighton warned against using laughing gas after a teenager arrived in their emergency unit with breathing difficulties. She had inhaled a considerable quantity at a festival and air had leaked into the space between her lung and chest wall which can cause the lung to collapse.
Heavy use can also deplete the body's stores of vitamin B12, causing anaemia and nerve damage. The Global Drugs Survey found that about 4% of users had symptoms such as numbness, tingling and shooting pains in the limbs.
People often use nitrous oxide in conjunction with cannabis or alcohol, explains Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health. That too is a concern, she says, as it increases the risks involved.
But in general, most users are not consuming laughing gas heavily and at that level it is
"a remarkably safe drug",
says Winstock,
"unless you are drunk or high on other drugs and you happen to do it in the middle of the road and you fall over".
"But it's important to say that it is not harmless,"
says Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, consultant psychiatrist and founder of the Club Drug clinic.
"Some of those risks are to do with the way it's taken and some of it, as with most drugs, is with how frequently you use it."
Perhaps the greatest danger is that more young people end up inhaling gases that they think are nitrous oxide but are in fact a dangerous substitute.
When 17-year-old Joseph Benett died in 2012, it was reported as a death from laughing gas. He had in fact consumed a cocktail of gases including butane and pentane from a can brought back from Israel.
"What we worry about is that people start to think that inhaling gas for a laugh is an OK thing to do,"
says Ream. It's certainly not right or normal to inhale a gas for intoxication, he says.
タイヤ修理用「シバガス」、危険ドラッグに 京都府が規制へ
京都新聞 10月8日(木)22時40分配信 headlines.yahoo.co.jp
自転車のタイヤ修理用ガスと称して販売されている「シバガス」について、京都府は８日、府薬物乱用防止条例に基づき、新たな危険ドラッグとみなして規制すると発表した。
主成分の亜酸化窒素を新たに指定薬物にすることで、医療用などを除き、１０日から府内での製造や販売、所持を罰則付きで禁止する。条例の罰則は最大懲役２年、罰金１００万円。
鎮痛や麻酔などで医療機関や半導体製造などで産業現場でも使われており、こうした用途向けは規制対象外とする。
府によると、シバガスは小型の金属製容器入りで、主にインターネットで売られている。
吸引すると多幸感が得られ、規制が強化された危険ドラッグに代わり広がってきたという。
危険ドラッグをめぐり、府は法律に基づき２２９７物質（５月時点）を規制対象にしているが、府独自の指定薬物は初めてとなる。府薬務課は
「インターネット経由を含めて販売行為が分かれば、指導や警告ではなく、すぐに府警へ告発することもある」
としている。
新たな危険ドラッグ「笑気ガス」の乱用問題
33765910.at.webry.info/201508/article_11
実は、この場で取り上げることがためらわれて、意図的に取り上げてこなかった、新しい乱用薬物があります。
英国などヨーロッパで、合法ドラッグ（legal highs）として急速に広まっている「笑気ガス」です。
ヨーロッパでの乱用拡大を受けて、わが国でも、一部でインターネット販売されているようですが、規制の難しい対象だけに、いたずらに注目度をあげたくないと思い、私自身はこの話題を避けてきました。
しかし、先週あたりから、わが国の報道も取り上げ始め、また、和歌山県が知事監視薬物に指定したので、そろそろ、警告情報の発信を開始します。
英国では、数年前からこのガスの乱用が広まり始め、2006～2012年の間に英国では17人が、このガスを吸引して死亡したといいます。
2014年夏、英国の地方自治体協議会（Local Government Association）は警告情報を出し、笑気ガスの乱用拡大への対策を求めてきました。
この夏のVフェスティバルでは、最近導入された公共の場の安全性確保命令（Public Space Protection Order）によって、警察が「笑気ガス」などの危険ドラッグの取締まりに当たりましたが、今日のBBCニュースによると、逮捕者は63人、警察が押収した「笑気ガス」の容器は17,000本を超えたといいます（下記参照①）。
●「笑気ガス」とは
「笑気ガス」とは、亜酸化窒素（N2O）のガスで、銀色のメタリックな容器に高圧充填された状態で販売されています。
亜酸化窒素には、鎮痛・麻酔作用があり、乱用者は、陶酔感やリラックスした感覚を味わうために、このガスを吸引するといいます。
「笑気ガス」は、100年以上も前から麻酔薬などに使われてきたもので、現在では、食品添加物としてしても重要な材料となっています。
乱用者が手に入れる充填容器も、本来は、様々な実用目的のために販売されているものです。
・鎮痛麻酔薬として、歯科医院で歯を削ったり詰め物を入れたりする際に、酸素とともに吸入する
・補助的な麻酔薬として、他の麻酔薬と合わせて使われることがある
・エンジンの出力を増加させる補助剤
・安定窒素ガスとして食品包装用に使う
・泡立て調理器具用のガス
●乱用による問題
英国では、乱用目的で吸引する人たちの間で少なからぬ事故が報告されていますが、他の薬物による中毒とは、いささか異なる性格の事故が多いのが特徴です。
英国政府系の薬物情報サイト「FRNK」は、亜酸化窒素の危険性を次のように記載しています。
■亜酸化窒素にはどんな危険性がありますか？
亜酸化窒素は、めまいを引き起こしたり、判断力に影響を及ぼし、不注意な行動や危険な振舞いによって、とくに危険な環境下では、自らを危険にさらすことが起き得ます。
その他の危険性としては
・酸欠による意識消失や死亡
これは、亜酸化窒素によって、呼気中の有効酸素が実質的に追い出されることによって起きます。締め切った空間で吸引したり、ポリ袋で口や鼻を覆っている場合には、危険性はさらに高くなります。
・亜酸化窒素の大量・継続使用は、ビタミンB12の欠乏や、貧血を招くことがあります。
（以下省略・下記参照③）
●規制の難しさ
最近、英国では、急速に「笑気ガス」の乱用が拡大しているとみられ、対策が検討されていますが、現在は、この薬物を直接的に取締まる制度はありません。
亜酸化窒素は、現に様々な用途に使われていること、また、乱用者の事故や死亡も報じられていますが、そのほとんどは、この薬物による直接的な中毒とはいえないことなどから、現行法で取り締まることは難しいとみられています。
でも、英政府がいま議会提案している危険ドラッグ全面禁止法案では、これまでの規制枠ではとらえきれなかった「笑気ガス」も規制対象にすることができると説明されています。
しかし、いま下院で審議中のこの法案が成立したとしても、英国の「笑気ガス」問題が一気に解決に向かうかどうかは、予断を許さない状況だと思います。