United Kingdom

12 readers

1 users here now

Main community for the Feddit UK instance

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

186

Nitrous oxide: Laughing gas to be illegal by end of year (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

82 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There will be exemptions for legitimate uses of nitrous oxide, for example in medical or catering industries. The gas is commonly used as a painkiller and for producing whipped cream in cooking.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The government's decision to make possession a crime goes against recommendations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which advised against new laws to ban nitrous oxide.

Announcing the law change on Tuesday, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said people in the UK were "fed up with yobs abusing drugs in public spaces and leaving behind a disgraceful mess for others to clean up".

The government's crime and policing minister Chris Philp said: "There is no question that abusing laughing gas is dangerous to people's health and it is paramount we take decisive action before the situation gets worse.

Prof David Nutt, from Imperial College London's department of medicine, previously said there was around about one death per year in the UK from around one million nitrous oxide users.

Repeated hits of nitrogen dioxide can deplete body levels of an important vitamin called B12, which, in turn, can cause permanent nerve damage.

It can affect both the spinal cord and the nerves in arms and legs, causing loss of feeling, abnormal sensations and muscle weakness or even full paralysis.

The original article contains 917 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!