Kids are huffing freon, now. What ever happened to just

[madinmaryland]

taking a couple of hits of pot? Oh yeah, 20 years of jail vs. no penalty for huffing freon, just possible instant death or brain damage. Freon also causes frostbite in the lungs and airways.

:wtf:

[Fumesucker]

1. Obama thinks freon is superior to pot..

I notice he's not pushing to make freon illegal.

[Skittles]

51. so sayeth "fumesucker"

:D

[Fumesucker]

52. LOL.. The fumes I am sucking are financial in nature..

Running on fumes.. :rofl:

[mdmc]

2. we cant arrest our way out of this problem

but we gonna try..

[WinkyDink]

3. Where are they getting it?! :-)

[ChiciB1]

27. Good Question... I Have A Car That Needs Some & I'm Told I Have To

go to a mechanic to have it done. And I have a 1991 Celica STX and they said I might even have to have some extra part put on.

[NNN0LHI]

42. I have locking caps that requires a special tool to remove on my outside condenser unit fittings

That must be one place they are getting it.

Don

[awoke_in_2003]

43. any auto parts store...

R12 is almost impossible to get, but not the new stuff.

[eppur_se_muova]

47. Spray cans -- used for blowing dust from keyboards etc.

Someone posted about this a few years back ... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=218&topic_id=890&mesg_id=890

This is an inert gas; when you breathe it in your lungs are left with no oxygen, so dizziness and blacking out can result. While it is nontoxic, it is heavier than air, which means it will pool in your lungs even after you breathe some of it out. Kids have killed themselves by breathing in too much and blacking out, or by altering the valve to keep releasing the gas continuously.

I really thought these cans would have been banned by now.

ETA: OK, they're actually stealing it from AC units now. Stupid.

[PeaceNikki]

4. Dude, they were doing this in the 80's

[madinmaryland]

9. Huh? They had air conditioners in the 80's???

:wtf:

[PeaceNikki]

10. The fancy people did.

[madinmaryland]

13. The 1%'ers in other words.

[Rebubula]

53. You are kidding, right?

A/C was common to most all people in the 80s....even in the 70s, most people had A/C of one form or another in their house.

[cwydro]

34. No hon...

some of the non-fancy people did too.

[PeaceNikki]

.

I was playin' :)

[PeaceNikki]

37. .

I was playin' :)

[cwydro]

19. I was just getting out of college in the early 80's

but yes, we had air conditioners....

How old are you?

We had air conditioners in my childhood home and we were FAR from the 1%.

[PeaceNikki]

22. We even had one in our CAR!!!

And also, not anywhere near the 1%.

[cwydro]

33. We had central AC in our new house

in the 70's!!

But in our 60's house we still had window units.

Still lmao that someone thinks there was no AC in the 80's ....

[snooper2]

63. sarcasm and wit goes VRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOM

over peoples heads :rofl:

[Maraya1969]

36. Yea

[EOTE]

66. Are you serious? NT

[madinmaryland]

70. No.

[Codeine]

5. Freon? That's probably a myth.

It's basically impossible to find. Infinitely more difficult than weed.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. I was going to say - it's another banned substance

and there aren't street dealers in it.

[Gamow]

7. they huff it out of AC units and refrigerators.

I worked in a rehab, we had to put a locking fence around the outdoor units to prevent the systems from being drained

[PeaceNikki]

8. Which is why it was popular in the 80's.

[madinmaryland]

12. They did a segment on freon huffing on the local news down here in San Antone tonight.

I'll see if I can find a link for the report. I had never heard of it, but some people seem to think it has been around since the 80's.

[PeaceNikki]

14. Because it has been around since at least the 80's. I was there.

[Crabby Appleton]

25. In '67 or '68 we bought a 25 lbs tank of freon from

an industrial supply company, 25 lbs is a lot of freon

[Lisa0825]

29. My ex was doing it when he was in college in the late 80s.

I should have known then to run in the opposite direction. LOL

And yes I witnessed him and his friend doing it. So it is not a myth. It was easily accessible then. You could by a can in most convenience stores that had an automotive section.

[cwydro]

38. AC has been around from before the 80's

You must be very young.

But thanks for the laughs.

[Obamanaut]

55. It was around in the 70s as well. Cans of electrical contact cleaner. nt

[Warpy]

17. However, the newer refrigerants aren't and they're being huffed

and there are deaths every single year. Around here, it's spray paint if they can get it and gasoline if they can't. Then they graduate to meth, which is cheap and available and wrecks their bodies within months.

The drug war is insane and it's killing us as well as killing our civil rights and throwing too many of us into jail. End it NOW.

[Codeine]

20. That I believe. nt

[Arkansas Granny]

39. I've known of people huffing gasoline and paint back in the 60's.

Kids have always been looking for a cheap high.

[Warpy]

56. Black market prices have kept the real thing out of reach

for most of them.

However, the one gasoline head I knew was in his 20s, somebody who'd dropped out of sight for a while and then reappeared with a backpack made out of a fruit crate with a gasoline can on top and a tin cup on a chain attached to the crate. It turned out the gasoline can contained gasoline. He said 30 cents would keep him high for a month.

I suppose he didn't worry about brain cells because he didn't have that many to lose in the first place. He was entertaining, though.

I can't stand the stink, so I never bothered trying it. Ditto spray paint and glue. I saved my money until I could get real drugs.

[Arkansas Granny]

58. I always preferred the natural products instead of industrial.

[KittyWampus]

62. AH! So now drugs must not only be legal. They must be cheap, too.

[EOTE]

68. If drugs were legal, they would be cheap by default.

Even if they were taxed all to hell, they'd be very cheap. Weed is actually a weed, it grows everywhere. The only reason it's so damned expensive is that dealers need to grow indoors and worry about going to jail. You remove the threat of going to jail and it's very easy to produce almost any drug in mass quantities.

[Warpy]

73. That's the most efficient way to put the gangs out of business.

There is no reason for them to be this expensive. Only regulated to make it more difficult for kids to get.

But I'm sure the moralists want to see them illegal and as expensive as possible because it's been working so well.

:sarcasm:

[JVS]

30. There are freon substitutes out there that probably get called by the generic term freon.

[obxhead]

35. There are still millions of cars with the stuff in them.

I had a friend that used to go to pull a part junkyards to find the stuff.

[awoke_in_2003]

44. No, it is not impossible

Just pop into your local autozone or o'reilly's:

http://www.autozone.com/autozone/accessories/Fluids-and-Chemicals/Freon-134a/_/N-261q

[Codeine]

45. Reformulated. Huh. I stand corrected. nt

[awoke_in_2003]

46. Yeah, R12 is next to impossible to get these days...

but R134 is readily available.

[Puzzler]

50. Freon is "R-12" this is "R-134a" ...

... which is one of the newer refrigerants.

R-134a is tetrafluoroethane

R-12 (freon) is dichlorodifluoromethane

[JoeyT]

57. It's only hard to find certain kinds.

R12 and R22 are hard to find because you need a license to buy them and even then they're expensive.

Course if you're going to buy from the automotive section, may as well go all in and get ether. Anything Hunter S. Thompson couldn't handle has to be the good stuff.

[virgogal]

11. Words fail me.

[Cali_Democrat]

15. Now?

I remember people huffing that when I was younger. They got it from an air conditioner.

This was the early 1990's.

[madinmaryland]

18. Yeah...

I had never heard of it until I saw the news clip. Aren't there a lot better things to get you high rather that freezing your lungs??

:shrug:

[Cali_Democrat]

21. Ya....it's lame

The kids have to be educated about it. I'm sure many aren't aware of the dangers.

[madinmaryland]

16. Here is the link (This is happening in San Antonio)...

http://www.woai.com/news/local/story/Thieves-getting-high-on-air-conditioning-chemicals/qYpg5GP5cEOUXXUkQGuvwA.cspx

[eppur_se_muova]

48. Wow, some of the comments are just appalling.

Mostly appallingly uninformed.

[glowing]

23. We had wippets. Little canisters.. Fill a balloon and get a cheap high.

[madinmaryland]

24. I remember those. Well I remember of people doing them!!

:D

[Turbineguy]

26. Releasing certain refrigerants into the enviornment

on purpose is a Federal violation with a civil penalty fine of $27,500 per day per occurrence under Section 608 of the Clean Air Act. Those reporting violations may be entitled to a reward of as much as $10,000.

[RegieRocker]

28. They will alays find a way, that is the futilty of outlawing substances.

[obxhead]

31. I had a friend in HS turn into a vegetable from freon.

He was an otherwise bright kid. :(

[Fumesucker]

41. Yeah, but at least he didn't ruin his life with pot..

Seriously, sorry about your friend.

I had a friend who pretty much wasted his mind huffing paint thinner.

[obxhead]

72. He was a happy pothead.

It wasn't until he got in trouble with the law multiple times for small amounts of pot before he switched to "legal" highs.

It was really sad. Obviously he had problems if he would resort to Freon, but the pot wasn't literally killing him at least.

[elehhhhna]

32. also taking cold meds, mucinex and robitussin

plus whiffing whipped cream cans and much more.

[no_hypocrisy]

40. Whippets were the thing when I was 18.

[Puzzler]

49. Freon? It's very difficult to get hold of now.

Where are they finding it? It's been banned for about 20 years. If they could find it, it would be black market and uber-expensive!

Or are they using one of the newer refrigerant gases?

[Shagbark Hickory]

64. That was my first thought exactly.

Freon? :wtf:

[Motown_Johnny]

54. You are just catching onto this now? It has been in the news for years

[Name removed]

59. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[KittyWampus]

60. Oh please. Pretending the same kids who huff chemicals are the same ones drawn to smoke pot

is ridiculous.

[madinmaryland]

71. My point was, and maybe not stated very well, but the point is that

pot smoking is much less dangerous than huffing.

[Defectata]

61. It's a joke

"It's a joke. Greed and the desire to take drugs are two separate things. If you want to separate the two, the thing you do is make drugs legal. Accept the reality that people do want to change their consciousness, and make an effort to make safer, healthier drugs."
Jerry Garcia
Rolling Stone
Nov. 30, 1989

[Shagbark Hickory]

65. Whatever happened to just going to the soda shop and getting a nice rootbeer float?

[mainer]

67. I thought huffing bath salts was the big teenage craze

Before, it was paint and glue sniffing. All of it does bad -- and maybe permanent -- damage. Too bad they didn't just go back to pot.

[hifiguy]

69. I knew a guy who died from huffing freon in the 1970s

It was a band practice and I was the one who found him passed out in the keyboard player's bedroom. He hung on for a month or so, but was pretty much a vegetable. We were all questioned by the cops who asked if we had done any other drugs at the time. When we told the cops - truthfully - that we'd smoked some weed they scoffed and asked about "real" drugs like coke or heroin.

[backscatter712]

74. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.