London’s opioid crisis has been front and centre for a long time now; so long that it’s easy to miss other drug crises that are happening across the world.
If you’ve never heard the term “hippy crack” before, you’re probably not from the UK. It’s a street name for nitrous oxide canisters, the kind that charge whipped cream dispensers. Similar to what Canadians and Americans call whippits, hippy crack is widespread across parts of the UK and is becoming more and more problematic.
XFM News contacts in Manchester, England, spoke with students in the area and learned of online delivery services that run canisters door to door.
“I mean, it’s obviously not safe. Everyone’s using it especially first year people in halls. That’s where, you know, most of it’s going on. I think it’s just so accessible and easy to get, you know, we’ve got numbers. People you can drop off 24/7, all around Manchester,” one student told Northern Quota reporters.
The drug’s availability means that it is the second most used drug—after cannabis—between 16 and 24-year-olds in the UK.
“Its accessibility is actually out of hand. I was having a birthday party for one of my mates in second year, one runs to the shop and literally just gets some balloons for completely innocent reasons. Some guy was like, ‘I’ve got some canisters,’ basically, and I was like, wow,” said another student.
Nitrous oxide can cause some short-term side effects, such as excessive sweating, shivering, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. Experts warn that taking too much can be fatal, as it can starve your brain of oxygen.
While the drug isn’t nearly as fatal as drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine, it still has the potential for misuse leading to brain damage or death.
XFM News spoke to Canadian students to see what they think of the misuse of nitrous oxide.
“I mean, I kind of wonder what the situations were like of the people that were doing that. Like why they were drawn to that kind of high? Huffing anything is kind of like a last resort for most people who do recreational drugs. So I yeah, I’d be a little concerned as to how those people were getting along if that’s what they were resorting to,” said a Fanshawe student named Hannah.
As stated before, what is possibly the hardest fact is that UK law enforcement is fighting to stop the abuse of a drug that’s as easily obtainable as walking to a corner store. As Northern Quota reporters said best to illustrate the ease of getting one’s hands on canisters of nitrous oxide,
“The only thing stopping our reporter buying the drug was the question: ‘ What are you going to use it for?’.”
