This stuff can kill you. Even casual users risk permanent brain, hearing, liver and kidney damage. Yet, according to a new government study, more than 12 million Americans do it each year, and in 1998, the most recent year for which estimates are available, a million children tried inhalants for the first time. One in five will do so before the end of high school. It's impossible to ban or even control all the products that people will abuse in the never-ending, futile and destructive pursuit of the perfect buzz.
Hope lies in education, in homes, schools and on the street, peer to peer.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is trying to spread the word, and the industries that make and sell this stuff ought to pitch in some resources to help.