Nitrous oxide still sold legally across U.S. as Louisiana pushes for tougher laws

(InvestigateTV) — It’s a substance commonly referred to as “laughing gas,” but there’s nothing funny about what nitrous oxide is doing to people across the country.

Sold in smoke shops in bright packaging and flavored varieties, the gas is marketed for use in whipped cream dispensers, but abused for euphoric highs.

Investigative Reporter Rob Krieger traveled to New England, where nitrous oxide remains legal and accessible, even at smoke shops just blocks from high schools.

“Do y’all have nitrous?” Krieger asked a clerk in Laconia, New Hampshire.

“Yeah,” the clerk replied. “Boxes and boxes of it.”

It’s the same accessibility that Holley Hill, a recovering nitrous oxide addict, says kept her trapped for years.

“I thought it was insane when I was buying it myself,” Hill said. “I can’t believe they’re letting me do this repeatedly, day after day.”

Hill says she abused over 22,000 cartridges of nitrous oxide in just six months, spending more than $10,000 on the fleeting high.

“I would have cartridges on the passenger seat next to me. Boxes and boxes and boxes of them. And I would just screw it and do it and then another and then another one,” she recalled. “I had spent so much money that I was it was like the bottom of the barrel. Like chemically, I had no dopamine, no serotonin, and I had no money.”

She often drove between towns in New Hampshire with nothing but cartridges in the passenger seat — inhaling one after another.

“I was like a zombie,” she said. “I could hardly walk.”

Nitrous still openly sold

In New Hampshire, smoke shop clerks described nitrous use casually, offering balloons and nozzles for easier inhalation.

“Some people fill it in a balloon and do it,” one clerk said. “I can give you a couple of balloons.”

At one smoke shop near Laconia High School, Krieger was able to purchase a 24-pack of nitrous cartridges with no questions asked.

Read more on this investigation here.