Britain’s laughing gas problem and the sober truth about decriminalising drugs

The tragic case of student Ellen Mercer – who inhaled two to three ‘big bottles’ of nitrous oxide gas each day – demonstrates our failed approach to dealing with addiction, writes Ian Hamilton

Ellen Mercer died in February last year (Supplied)

Yet another death linked to laughing gas – this time, the tragic case of Ellen Mercer, 24, who inhaled two to three “big bottles” of nitrous oxide gas each day – demonstrates our failed approach to drugs.

Ellen died in February last year, although it wasn’t until November 2023 that the home secretary took the decision to classify nitrous oxide as a class C drug under the 1971 misuse of drugs act. It is impossible to know whether these tougher controls for laughing gas would have saved Ellen’s life. However, it was already illegal to inhale nitrous oxide for anything other than medical or dental purposes under existing law.

Nitrous oxide has been growing in popularity in recent years – you only need look at the discarded silver bullet-shaped containers in our streets as evidence of how widespread it has become. As its appeal has grown, so too have the size of the cannisters. To give you context as to just how large these “big bottles” may have been: it looks likely Ellen had been using several 600g cannisters a day at the time of her death.

The government had been considering tighter controls for nitrous oxide for some time. In 2021, then home secretary Priti Patel asked her expert scientific advisors to review the harms associated with the drug and make recommendations as to how these could be reduced. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs reported back to the (then) new home secretary, Suella Braverman, in March 2023, that the drug should not be placed under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

This is yet another example of how the government plays catch up as new drugs emerge, or older drugs regain popularity. The one constant is the way governments of all persuasion turn to legislation as a remedy to whatever new chemical becomes widely used – and sadly, some of those using the drug pay with their life.

History shows that merely ratcheting up drug controls does little to deter use or reduce fatalities. Look no further than our most secure environments, prisons – which are awash with drugs. If we can’t control the supply or use of drugs in prisons, you would have to be deluded to think we can control it in our communities.

That’s not to suggest we should do nothing – rather, it is a plea to try something different. Just as we turned to the scientific evidence during the Covid pandemic for solutions, so we should with this issue.

Now, nitrous oxide use is rarely fatal in the UK and is dwarfed by the record numbers dying due to opiates and benzodiazepines. Every year for the last decade we have witnessed new records being set for the number of these premature deaths. This, despite opiates being the most tightly regulated drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act as a class A drug.

We are not short on evidence of how to reduce the potential for harm that drugs can cause. We can call on the experience of Portugal, which radically changed its approach to drug policy more than 20 years ago. The Portuguese government introduced legislation which viewed people who used drugs and developed problems as patients, rather than criminals. Ensuring specialist treatment was well resourced and available was the key to their success in reducing drug related deaths.

Despite (or perhaps because) of the fact that we are approaching a general election, neither Labour nor the Conservatives dare tackle the problem we have with drugs. Instead, both parties are committed to getting tougher on drugs, believing that’s what we want to hear. As yet more people pay with their lives as a result, we must one one key question: is it?

Ian Hamilton is a senior lecturer in addiction and mental health at the University of York