American states ban inhalant drug-sniffing

Press, 9 May 1985, Page 22

American states ban inhalant drug-sniffing

By

HUGH NEVILL.

NZPA

Washington Three American states have enacted laws to control inhalant sniffing, a method of getting “high” which researchers say appears now to be confined to the really poor. Experience in North America shows that sniffing can kill.

The glamour drug in Washington is cocaine and the common street drug is heroin. Cocaine,, because of its price, tends to be used by the very rich — psychiatrists, actors, sports stars, lawyers — but it is becoming more widespread among heroin users, who tend to be black and much poorer. Marijuana is so common in all social classes that the over-pressed police do little to control its use, and in many circles it is considered on a par with alcohol and tobacco.

News reports concentrate on busts of multi-million dollar cocaine and heroin smuggling rings and usually ignore abuse of the less visible substances.

Inhalant sniffing is widespread in Mexico and other Central American countries, and in the United States tends to be practised mostly by young Hispanics and American Indians, according to all reports. It is particularly preva-

lent in Texas, which state borders Mexico, and which has a heavy Hispanic population. The estimate there is that 80,000 young people are chronic inhalers. Texas is one of the states which takes the problem seriously, and the practice has spread there to young poor whites as well.

The main inhalants sniffed have been glue and paint.

Most of the users are boys, aged between 12 and 15, they say. Inhalant sniffing in the United States was much more widespread about 10 years ago, a point which worries New Zealanders living in the United States who maintain that many American trends take about that time to filter through to New Zealand.

Sergeant Eugene Rudolph, of the Los Angeles sheriff’s department, and who has been involved in narcotics enforcement for 29 j'ears. says that glue-sniffing “is not so much of a problem over all as (it was) five years ago. The height of the problem was 10 years ago. Now. the kids — those who can afford it — have moved to hard drugs.”

That means, the New Zealanders maintain, that the same switch from gluesniffing to hard drugs may surface in New Zealand in five or 10 years.

That would bring a crime wave in its wake: most of

the street crime in the United States, and many burglaries, are attributed to addicts often desperate enough to kill for SUS2O or ?US3O to get a “fix.” Ms Irma Stranz, county drug programme administrator for Los Angeles County, says doctors have found that “sniffing” — unlike use of most hard drugs — can cause permanent brain damage. Mr Jim Campbell, a Maryland state congressman who worked with "inhalers” for three years, says he knew one 15-year-old who suffered irreversible brain damage after sniffing glue for three years. A pilot programme in one school in Texas resulted in a 50 per cent reduction in sniffers.

The aim of the programme is to collect SUS2 million a year from corporate sponsors, but in its first 10 months of operation it has only managed to get SUSSOO,OOO.

Mr Campbell, the Maryland legislator, is solidly behind it.

“For many young people inhalant abuse is their first form of drug abuse." said Mr Campbell. "It is cheap. It is accessible. They are not hassled when buying inhalants. And you get high real quick. But then you build up an immunity rapidly, and so you have to switch — to move on to hard drugs.”