As usual for the type of screeching and breathless hit piece that these types of things inevitably become, it seems that two very distinct things are being conflated here in a probably deliberate attempt to make them appear equivalent.

The headline image shows a bunch of nitrous oxide cartridges or “whippets” discarded on the ground, and there is one lonely mention of nitrous down at the very bottom of the article. The article puts a lot of scary words around “inhalants” but stops short of defining which ones they’re actually talking about, and I’m guessing (having not watched any of the TikTok videos nor do I intend to) that nitrous is not the actual, or at least only, concern here. Either that or they’re trying hard to imply that nitrous fries your brain as much as huffing, say, tetrafluoroethane.

Doing nitrous (or whippets, or hippie crack, or laughing gas, or whatever you want to call it this decade) is neither new, nor is it particularly harmful provided you can manage not to do it in such a moronic way that you asphyxiate yourself or pathologically huff the stuff at the edge of high precipices or while driving or something.

Inhaling propellant gasses from aerosol cans, meanwhile, i.e. the usual sort of “huffing,” is monumentally stupid and also a fast track to permanent brain damage.

Just make sure you’re packin’ the right kind of chrome, choom.