{"id":371742,"date":"2026-04-09T19:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T19:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/371742\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T19:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T19:55:08","slug":"nitrous-oxide-abuse-rising-hospital-cases-and-police-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/371742\/","title":{"rendered":"Nitrous oxide abuse: Rising hospital cases and police action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of the exposures reported since 2019, 70% of patients were aged 20-54, 23% were 13-19, and 7% were 2-12. <\/p>\n

The centre said the total number of exposures remained small but appeared to be increasing. <\/p>\n

Some people reported losing the ability to walk, psychosis, numbness and slurred speech, and some reported inhaling hundreds of nangs \u2013 up to 10 litres of nitrous oxide \u2013 in a single day. <\/p>\n

\"BottlesBottles containing nitrous oxide up to 3.3 litres in size are available for sale, the equivalent of 300 small canisters. Photo \/ Doug Laing<\/p>\n

Health New Zealand\u2019s regional chief medical officer for Te Waipounamu, neurologist Dr David Gow, said heavy use could deplete vitamin B12, which was needed in the spinal cord, nerves and brain. <\/p>\n

Depleting the vitamin could cause people to stagger, lose sensation in their hands and feet and lose control of their bladders. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s prolonged use, the symptoms become chronic, and the outcome is quite poor, which can have a huge impact on individuals and their wh\u0101nau. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got personal experience of seeing patients who have got neurological damage associated with nangs, and I have to say they had no idea that this was a possible outcome.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TwoTwo people in a car using balloons to inhale nitrous oxide or ‘nangs’ – a popular way of taking the gas. Photo \/ NZ Police<\/p>\n

Police have been cracking down on the recreational sale of nangs in recent weeks, delivering hundreds of letters to stores and charging one retailer in Rotorua last month. <\/a><\/p>\n

Penalties currently include a fine of up to $500,000 or two years\u2019 imprisonment. <\/p>\n

Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young said catering companies would not be buying canisters from high-street stores, and any non-specialist retailers selling the canisters should reconsider doing so. <\/p>\n

She said the sale of nangs could also be contributing to retail crime. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the youth that have been caught doing retail crime recently have been stealing from stores to sell the product on a black market in order to buy the nitrous oxide.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"HealthHealth Minister Simeon Brown is considering options for cracking down further on the illegal sale of nitrous oxide. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n

Health Minister Simeon Brown said maximum penalties for illegally selling nangs were increased last year. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have requested advice on how effective these changes have been, including whether additional measures are needed to keep New Zealanders safe.\u201d <\/p>\n

Communities Against Alcohol Harm secretary Grant Hewison said the Government should empower councils to regulate how substances were used, sold and marketed at a local level. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just becoming more and more widespread, and we\u2019re really concerned that, you know, we\u2019ll end up with a crisis, like we did with synthetic cannabis.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lachlan Rennie is an Auckland-based multimedia journalist for Newstalk ZB covering science, defence, technology, community issues and general news. He previously studied journalism at the New Zealand Broadcasting School before joining NZME in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of the exposures reported since 2019, 70% of patients were aged 20-54, 23% were 13-19, and 7% were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1903,432,95,6726,138,2512,8344,19666,127,6097,13574,71,305,2241,194322,16484,130,111,139,48357,69,48358,194323,675,801,667],"class_list":{"0":"post-371742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-abuse","9":"tag-action","10":"tag-and","11":"tag-become","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-cases","14":"tag-common","15":"tag-crack","16":"tag-despite","17":"tag-down","18":"tag-efforts","19":"tag-from","20":"tag-have","21":"tag-hospital","22":"tag-hospitalisations","23":"tag-illegal","24":"tag-more","25":"tag-new-zealand","26":"tag-newzealand","27":"tag-nitrous","28":"tag-nz","29":"tag-oxide","30":"tag-poisonings","31":"tag-police","32":"tag-rising","33":"tag-sales"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}