Should helium be a class A drug?

[chem1st]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/29/helium-barbiturates-drug-death-statistics

 

The inert gas helium and barbiturate drugs contributed to more deaths last year than ecstasy, cannabis, mephedrone and GHB, official figures show.

 

Helium is being used recreationally and people are dying.

 

Must admit I had some fun in the pub a month or so back with other people after sucking the helium out of some balloons and speaking in a funny voice.

 

Fortunately we are all still alive and paying tax upon the amber nectar.

 

But Helium kills! Perhaps it should be banned!

 

Should Helium be a class A drug?

 

Should we lock up the baloonies who peddle this harmful substance?

[medusa]

Everything kills if you have it in sufficient quantities, so if you make helium a class A drug then you'd have to make a whole load of other things class A drugs too.

[spats]

Ohhh.....I never knew sucking the life out of Mr Smiley Face could be so dangerous.

[chem1st]

Everything kills if you have it in sufficient quantities, so if you make helium a class A drug then you'd have to make a whole load of other things class A drugs too.

 

Many drugs are made illegal because they are thought to kill (mephedrone is a recent example), whilst other dangerous drugs are allowed to remain legal, and some safe drugs are kept illegal.

[NightFlight]

Really?

Helium?

 

I suspect that this is sloppy reporting and what they actually mean is Nitrous oxide (same active drug as entonox or gas and air, just without the oxygen component which is in entonox).

That's most commonly inhaled from a balloon. And, because of the delivery system (the balloon) it's near enough impossible to overdose on, you pass out and thus let go of the balloon and start breathing in normal air again, the gas quickly leaves your system and you come back round.

The issues arise when you act like an idiot and either inhale it straight from the dispenser, causing freezing of the lungs, or start piping it into a plastic bag over your head, removing the failsafe of the balloon method.

(which incidently, mimics the way that entonox is administered in hospital, that funny valve thing you have to hold and suck on yourself... stops you OD'ing on the gas, because if you get near to OD'ing, you pass out, drop the valve mouthpiece thing, and start breathing normal air again.

 

**edit**

 

No, seem's they're right.

Still, helium? Is this from falling cylinders or something? air they sucking down on airships?

[TeaFan]

If you'd read the article properly you'd have noticed that most of the deaths attributed to helium were suicides. Asphyxiation by helium has been a common method of suicide since instructions were published in the best selling book The Final Exit. You're not comparing like with like. I support the legalisation of ecstasy but this is the wrong argument.

[Aleksandr]

I think we should insist on the use of hydrogen for party balloons. It's cheaper, so the money saved could be spent on bigger candles and cigarettes. Why, I bet it would be a good gas to use in airships!

[Odin's Wrath]

Should one of the most abundant elements in the universe be a class A drug??

 

Silly billy

[fake]

We should be banning paracetamol instead.

 

A stupid and misleading article especially this bit;

 

"The inert gas helium and barbiturate drugs contributed to more deaths last year than ecstasy, cannabis, mephedrone and GHB, official figures show."

 

Cant seem to find any figure for these cannabis deaths can you? And why do you think helium is called an inert gas?

[chem1st]

 

Cant seem to find any figure for these cannabis deaths can you?

 

Cannabis related deaths?

 

Heart attack due to obesity brought on by the munchies?

 

Death by philosophy? (Life passed the stoner by as he was contemplating the meaning of life, why we are here and everything)