The can of Galaxy Gas is roughly the size of a small fire extinguisher. It costs about $20 at gas stations across the country. Its packaging looks like a music festival — bright colors, stylized lettering, no medical warnings on the front. You can find social media videos of teenagers inhaling from it that have accumulated more than 300,000 views. Some have millions.
In 2010, nitrous oxide was involved in 23 deaths in the United States. In 2023, it was involved in 156. That’s a 578% increase in thirteen years. These are still small numbers compared to the opioid crisis — but they represent a category of preventable death that is accelerating while most of the national addiction apparatus looks the other way.
Andrew Yockey, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Mississippi, published research in April 2026 identifying 12- and 13-year-olds as the highest-risk age group for inhalant use. That’s not middle school age. That’s early middle school age — kids who, in many states, are not yet reached by the substance use prevention programs funded by SAMHSA and state health departments, which tend to assume the relevant population starts around 14 or 15.
“We’re seeing initiation at ages where prevention programs aren’t even talking to these kids yet,” Yockey’s research implies, in findings that call explicitly for “early, targeted prevention programs for younger adolescents.” The implication is worth stating plainly: the country is running its prevention infrastructure at the wrong age.
What inhalants actually are
The term “inhalants” covers a wider category than the popular imagination suggests. It includes volatile solvents (paint thinner, glue, nail polish remover), aerosol sprays (spray paint, hair spray), gases (nitrous oxide, butane, propane), and nitrites (poppers, used primarily by adults in sexual contexts). Different categories carry very different risk profiles, different user demographics, and different treatment approaches.
What they share is a pharmacological profile that arrives fast and leaves fast. The intoxication from nitrous oxide lasts roughly two to five minutes. The brevity is part of the appeal — especially for young adolescents who are managing risk relative to adults in their environment, who want something that doesn’t linger on their breath or require any particular setup. It’s also part of the danger. Brief effects encourage rapid re-dosing, and rapid re-dosing means extended oxygen deprivation.
The four main categories of inhalants also share something culturally: they are not understood, by most parents or most teachers, as addictive substances in the way that heroin or methamphetamine are. A parent who would immediately call a treatment program if they found fentanyl in their child’s room might not recognize the significance of a Galaxy Gas canister. That gap in perception is part of what allows inhalant use disorder to develop without the early interventions that might happen with other substances.
The neuroscience of why 13-year-olds
Nitrous oxide works primarily by antagonizing NMDA receptors — blocking glutamate, the brain’s primary excitatory neurotransmitter — which produces dissociation, a floating sensation, and euphoria. It also triggers the release of endogenous opioids, which accounts for some of the pleasurable quality. The combined effect is rapid, effective, and temporary relief from whatever is making the present moment feel unbearable.
For a 13-year-old, that profile maps directly onto the most common experiences of that age: anxiety, social pressure, depression, the relentless comparative misery of early adolescence. Yockey’s April 2026 study found that teenage girls show the highest odds of developing inhalant use disorder, a finding the researchers connected to the relationship between anxiety, depression, and inhalant use among adolescent girls specifically. The gas doesn’t fix the anxiety. But it stops it for four minutes. If you’re 13 and you don’t have better tools, four minutes might feel like a solution.
If you’re 13 and you don’t have better tools, four minutes might feel like a solution.
The problem that’s not visible until it’s serious: nitrous oxide irreversibly inactivates vitamin B12. The body needs B12 to maintain myelin — the protective sheath around nerve fibers. With repeated or heavy use, myelin degrades. The resulting condition, subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord, causes weakness, numbness, and difficulty walking. It can appear weeks after the last use, when there’s no obvious connection between the can and the neurological symptoms. Riley Children’s Hospital has documented cases of this presentation in teenagers. The damage can be permanent.
The brevity of the high, the silently accumulating neurological risk, the appealing packaging, the social media normalization, the $20 price point — this is the specific combination that makes nitrous oxide’s 2026 moment dangerous in a way that deserves more attention than it’s getting.
What social media did and what it didn’t do
Recreational nitrous oxide use doubled among young adults between 2015 and 2021, according to Monitoring the Future survey data — before the Galaxy Gas canister aesthetic existed and before the current social media landscape. The trend was already moving.
What social media did was accelerate the normalization and expand the apparent peer group. A teenager in a rural county where no one in their school is visibly using nitrous oxide can now find thousands of videos of teenagers in similar situations doing exactly that, and can interpret the likes and views as a form of social proof. Yockey’s April 2026 analysis found that nitrous oxide content videos averaged more than 300,000 views on major platforms, with some reaching millions. That is an enormous amount of implicit social endorsement for a behavior with serious neurological risk.
From 2023 to 2024, reports of intentional nitrous oxide exposure at U.S. poison centers increased by 58%. That number reflects only the cases serious enough to generate a poison control call — a fraction of total use. The underlying usage trend is substantially larger.
The policy response is fragmented and too slow
Tennessee passed legislation in January 2026 imposing fines on retailers who sell nitrous oxide canisters for recreational use, effective July 2026. Newport Beach and Orange County, California have enacted local ordinances making recreational nitrous oxide sales a misdemeanor. A handful of other jurisdictions are considering similar measures.
These responses are better than nothing. They are also limited in ways that matter. Nitrous oxide has enormous legitimate commercial uses — it is used in dentistry, food service, and medical pain management. You cannot prohibit it. The regulatory pathway runs through age restrictions, packaging requirements, quantity limits at retail, and liability for retailers who knowingly sell to minors. Some of those measures are being pursued. Most are not, and the federal government has not acted comprehensively.
The prevention gap is more troubling than the regulatory gap. NIDA’s adolescent substance use prevention architecture focuses primarily on alcohol, cannabis, and stimulants — the substances that cause the most mortality and that teenagers are using in the highest volumes. Inhalants get relatively little dedicated prevention funding or curriculum development. Yockey’s recommendation for “early, targeted prevention programs for younger adolescents” describes something that doesn’t currently exist at scale.
What treatment looks like
There are no FDA-approved medications for inhalant use disorder. The category is too diverse pharmacologically, and has received too little research funding relative to its clinical burden, to have generated the trials that would support an approval. Current evidence supports cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, and family-based treatment approaches — all of which work better when the family understands what they’re dealing with.
The treatment gap for inhalant use disorder is partly about stigma: providers report that parents often don’t bring inhalant-using adolescents to treatment because they don’t classify “huffing” as serious addiction the way they might classify heroin use. The neuroscience of B12 depletion and spinal cord damage suggests they should recalibrate that assessment.
The neuroscience of B12 depletion and spinal cord damage suggests they should recalibrate that assessment.
For adolescents, early intervention — before physical dependence develops, before neurological damage accumulates — is the highest-value moment. The research on treating adolescent inhalant use disorder is clear that family involvement and peer community support are essential components. Schools and primary care providers who know the signs can make that referral happen early. Most, currently, do not know the signs.
The gap between the trend and the response
The Galaxy Gas canister exists in a gap between what we understand about adolescent substance use, what we fund to prevent it, and what we’ve built to treat it. That gap is not invisible — Yockey and colleagues published the data in April, CNN covered it in May, multiple pediatric health systems have issued guidance. But there’s a distance between coverage and policy response that, in the inhalant space, has not been closed.
In the meantime, a 13-year-old in Tennessee can walk into a gas station in May 2026, buy a Galaxy Gas canister for $20, and find a hundred thousand videos on her phone telling her that what she’s about to do is normal. The law that might fine the retailer takes effect in July. The prevention program that might have reached her in sixth grade hasn’t been funded yet.
The can doesn’t know the new rules are coming. The B12 depletion doesn’t wait.
Filed Under
trendspsychologybiologyInhalantsNitrous Oxide