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Nassau County has restricted the sale of nitrous oxide cartridges — also known as “whip-its” and “laughing gas” — only allowing licensed food businesses to sell the product teenagers are using to get high.
The GOP-led legislature passed the bill on Monday, which was first introduced by Republicans in February, officially cracking down on vape shops and convenience stores hawking the inhalant to anyone who walks in without ID.
“We have a responsibility to step in before more young people get hurt,” the legislature’s Presiding Officer Howard Kopel said.
The new local law goes a step further than the state’s own 2021 ban on selling the products to anyone under 21, with Nassau County now making it a misdemeanor for retailers to sell the canisters anywhere that isn’t a licensed food business.
According to the legislature, the small metal cartridges have real uses in commercial kitchens as a whipping agent — but have increasingly been misused as a recreational inhalant — a practice that can cause oxygen deprivation, blood clots, nerve damage, heart palpitations, loss of consciousness, psychosis, numbness, spinal cord and brain damage, paralysis, and even death.
The canisters are often marketed to young people under flashy brand names like Galaxy Gas, splashed with bright colors and fruity flavors like tropical punch and strawberry cream, and has led to a TikTok trend of inhaling the dangerous gas so rampant that the platform banned searches for “nitrous oxide” outright.
More than 1,200 Americans died from nitrous oxide poisoning between 2010 and 2023, and millions more get high on the gas each year — with users gravitating toward larger canisters roughly 40 times the standard culinary size, according to national data and Nassau County officials.
The gas is so dangerous that neurologists have even declared that nitrous oxide is “more dangerous than cocaine” amid a dramatic uptick in young people experimenting with the drug.
“These products serve a legitimate purpose in the food industry,” said Legislator Rose Walker, Chairwoman of the Health & Social Services Committee.
“The problem is how easy they’ve become to buy and misuse. This legislation is about putting reasonable guardrails in place and protecting our community, especially our kids, from a serious and growing health risk,” the legislator added.
Violators face a $1,000 fine, up to a year in jail, or both — with steeper penalties for selling to minors and repeat offenders.
The ban comes just one week after Nassau County also unanimously fully barred the sale of kratom, an unregulated herbal supplement derived from a Southeast Asian plant that health officials warn can be dangerous and produce opioid-like effects in higher doses and has never been approved by the FDA.
That ban strips the product from store shelves countywide and penalizes businesses that continue to sell it with no exceptions, again going further than existing state law, which only prohibits sales to those under 21.
Kratom is commonly sold at gas stations, smoke shops and convenience stores in the form of capsules, powders, teas and bottled drinks, often marketed as a natural remedy for pain or anxiety.
Both measures await County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s signature.
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