Young Brits are dicing with death or life-changing injury by inhaling potentially deadly “hippy crack” which is being offered to revellers visiting bars at Tenerife’s party capital.
Scores of young holidaymakers were seen taking the drug during boozy nights out at the raucous Veronicas Strip at the popular Playa de las Americas resort.
It is the same strip where British teen Jay Slater partied at a festival the night before he disappeared in the island’s mountainous area.
The apprentice bricklayer, 19, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, went missing on June 17, 2024, while holidaying for a three-day music festival in Tenerife with friends. After a desperate month-long search, the 19-year-old’s remains were finally discovered on July 15 near the village of Masca, just metres from his last known location.
Hippy crack, made by filling balloons with the nitrous oxide gas from canisters to make whipped cream, is often thought of as harmless by users.
This is due to it also being known as laughing gas, because it is ingested from balloons and because it is given in controlled doses mixed with oxygen to pregnant women for pain relief (gas and air).
However, as it has to be taken repeatedly at short intervals for users to retain the brief euphoric feeling it can create, it can quickly become a dangerous and even lethal drug.
According to National Office of Statistics (ONS) data 8.7 percent of people in England and Wales aged 16 to 24 have tried the drug.
Addiction specialists Castle Craig warn that as a psychoactive substance, nitrous oxide can result in short-term side effects, including sweating, shivering, feeling or being sick, fatigue, dizziness, headaches, paranoia, hallucinations and sound distortion.
The Castle Craig website warns: “Taking too much nitrous oxide can cause you to become unconscious and suffocate from a lack of oxygen.
“Because it has legal uses, is easily purchased and the high doesn’t last for very long, many people think hippy crack or nitrous oxide is largely safe to use. Unfortunately, abusing laughing gas is associated with many negative side effects including:
“Use over the long term can also lead to B12 deficiency, and anaemia and stop your white blood cells from forming properly.”
Deaths are becoming increasingly more common and there have been cases of permanent paralysis after nerve damage.
The website added: “A severe deficiency in B12 can cause nerve damage. You may notice this through tingling or numbness in your fingers or toes. Eventually, it can make walking difficult and can even lead to paralysis. Unfortunately, the damage can persist in some cases.”
Mixing it with alcohol and other drugs can make it more dangerous.
According to the ONS, between 2001 and 2020, there were 56 registered deaths involving nitrous oxide in England and Wales and 45 of those deaths have happened since 2010.
Yet, Brits partying in bars at Veronica’s strip this month were seemingly oblivious to these risks, with several young men and women from across the UK seen inhaling balloon after balloon in between drinks.
One man in his 20s who had a Scottish accent said: “I’d get on it if I were you. You might enjoy it.”
Some were seen to obtain balloons from young women who had canisters they could blow them up from inside one of the bars.
Our findings were mirrored by a post on Tripadvisor about the strip which said: “We were sat there watching a girl having ‘balloons’ like they were going out of fashion, she was putting herself in a dangerous situation!”
The poster asked how this could be allowed on a premises and said staff were “openly selling balloons to young people.”
Although the canisters can be legally sold in both the UK and Spain, more use in the catering industry, it is illegal to sell them in both countries for recreational purposes.
But, on Tenerife, enforcement of the use of the substance as a drug appeared to be fairly lax.
The canisters were seen on sale in tobacco and souvenir shops and several officers from the Policia Nacional were seen outside the bars on Veronicas Strip this month but no one with balloons or selling them appeared to be approached.
Later in the evening a young British man was seen sitting outside the strip in what appeared to be distress before he appeared to go to sleep on the street.
Several other young Brits continued to inhale the balloons just metres away from him.
Not far away another man was later seen asleep, flat on his back, in the middle of another street.
However, it is not known exactly what, if any, drugs or alcohol the two men had consumed to end up in such vulnerable situations, due to pickpockets also reportedly patrolling the area.
The Spanish Policia Nacional said it was taking the threat from hippy crack seriously and pointed to a recent seizure of more than 860 canisters on the mainland.
A spokesperson said: “The nitrous oxide, which was packaged in 864 bottles, was seized when it was being transported to the city of Seville aboard a truck.
“The person in charge of transporting the merchandise that, according to investigators, was going to be distributed in different leisure areas frequented by young people has been arrested.”
