Inhalants

Street Names

Whippets, poppers, snappers

Brief Description

Inhalants are breathable chemical vapors that produce psychoactive (mindaltering) effects. A variety of products
common in the home and in the workplace contain substances that can be inhaled. Many people do not think of these products, such as spray paints, glues, and cleaning fluids, as drugs because they were never meant to be used to achieve an intoxicating effect.

Yet, young children and adolescents can easily obtain them and are among those most likely to abuse these extremely toxic substances.

Types of Inhalants

Inhalants fall into the following categories:

Volatile Solvents

• Industrial or household solvents or solvent-containing products, including paint thinners or removers, degreasers, dry-cleaning fluids, gasoline, and glue.
• Art or office supply solvents, including correction fluids, felt-tip-marker fluid, and electronic contact cleaners

Aerosols

• Household aerosol propellantsand associated solvents in items such as spray paints, hair or deodorant sprays, fabric protector sprays, aerosol computer cleaning products, and vegetable oil sprays.

Gases

• Gases used in household or commercial products, including butane lighters and propane tanks, whipping cream aerosols or dispensers (whippets), and refrigerant gases
• Medical anesthetic gases, such as ether, chloroform, halothane, and nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”)

Nitrites

• Organic nitritesare volatiles that include cyclohexyl, butyl, and amyl nitrites, commonly known as “poppers.” Amyl nitrite is still used in certain diagnostic medical procedures. Volatile nitrites are often sold in small brown bottles labeled as “video head cleaner,” “room odorizer,” “leather cleaner,” or “liquid aroma.”

Effects

Although they differ in makeup, nearly all abused inhalants produce short-term effects similar to anesthetics, which act to slow down the body’s functions. When inhaled in sufficient concentrations, inhalants can cause intoxication, usually lasting only a few minutes.

Sniffing highly concentrated amounts of the chemicals in solvents or aerosol sprays can directly induce heart failure and death within minutes of a session of repeated inhalations. This syndrome is known as “sudden sniffing death.

Chronic abuse of solvents can cause severe, long-term damage to the brain and nervous system, liver, and kidneys.