AUDIO – WHIP IT GOOD: DEVO –
April 3, 2025 – Walk into any vape store or sex shop, and you’ll find canisters of nitrous oxide showcased in window displays—ostensibly to catch the eye of bakers and baristas, who use the gas to aerate creams and foams. At the bodega near my apartment, boxes of up to 100 mini-canisters are piled up to eye level, next to Baby Yoda bongs.
In fact, culinary professionals generally don’t shop for equipment at stores with names like Puff N Stuff or Condom Sense. The true clientele inhales the gas to get high. A dangerous and technically illegal drug, nitrous oxide is widely available as long as everyone pretends it’s destined for use as a food product. Indeed, a whole industry appears to have built its business model around exploiting this loophole. Large distributors brand and flavor nitrous in ways that attract young inhalers, stock it with retailers catering to other vices, and sell it in quantities that are implausible for culinary use but ideal for huffing. The gas can even be ordered from Walmart, Amazon, and eBay. Without meaningful regulation, getting high on nitrous will remain as convenient as picking up a bag of chips.
