Calls to ban nangs after 'mind-bending' nitrous oxide is linked to more than 20 deaths – including tragic Schoolie Hamish Bidgood

SOPHIE TANNO
1 December 2018
DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
Calls are growing for a crackdown on nangs, a potent yet ultra cheap drug
Schoolie Hamish Bidgood died after inhaling nangs & falling from balcony
The widely available nitrous oxide drug is popular among Schoolie celebrations
In the UK use of the drug has doubled over past 12 months, according to ONS
 
Calls are growing for a crackdown on sales of nitrous oxide which has been linked to more than 20 deaths in the past eight years.
Nitrous oxide, known as nangs or ‘laughing gas’, is a legal high which results in a momentary high lasting around 20 seconds.
Earlier this week it was reported that Hamish Bidgood, 18, inhaled laughing gas at a Schoolies celebration on the Gold Coast, before plummeting 11 storeys his death from a hotel balcony.
Medical experts and drug counsellors believe that the drugs should not be so widely available to naive young people and can even cause long-lasting damage to the brain.
Dr Andrew Dawson of The Children’s Hospital at Westmead told the Daily Telegraph that the drug can shrivel the brain.
The doctor stated he had seen 20-year-olds who had inhaled the laughing gas with shrivelled brains like that of a 40-year-strong drinker.
There have been two recorded deaths from recreational use of the drug since 2010 in Australia and the drug was linked to 18 deaths in the UK between the years 2013 – 2016.
Nangs is a popular choice of drug at Schoolies celebrations because it is so easy to obtain.
Teenagers looking for a cheap thrill can get their hands on a canister of laughing gas – which contains nitrous oxide – for just $1.
Whipped cream canisters have since been pulled from Surfers Paradise supermarket shelves on Thursday following the 18-year-old’s death.
A spokesperson from IGA Surfers Paradise told Daily Mail Australia the store had being told by police to stop selling the canisters because they were being abused.
‘We’re not selling it anymore, we’ve being told by police that it’s being used the wrong way,’ the IGA spokesperson said.
Last year, a Sydney university student was left with potentially irreversible damage to her spinal cord after inhaling 360 canisters of nitrous oxide a week.
Toxicologist Dr Andrew Dawson told the ABC’s 7.30 program at the time: ‘Very recently I had a 20-year-old patient whose brain appeared to have the same level of damage as an alcoholic who had been drinking for 40 years.’
‘We have had a doubling of the number of calls from hospitals about significantly affected people from nitrous oxide exposure.’
Teenagers in the UK are also using the laughing gas, making use of a loophole in the law that provides an exemption for the drug’s medicinal use.
Shocking figures from the Office for National Statistics show that fatalities from recreational use of the drug are on the rise in the UK.
The drug was linked to three British deaths in the years 2013 and 2014, four in 2015 and double that amount in 2016 – resulting in 18 overall for those four years, The Sun reported.
Aircraft engineer Matthew Barnett, 23, from Ashton-in-Makerfield in England died after taking ‘hippy crack’ in his room and suffocating to death in November 2017.