NCJ Number
208548
Date Published
2004
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This paper provides a brief overview of some of the latest scientific findings on inhalants and inhalant abuse.
Abstract
Results of national surveys indicate that inhalant abuse is prevalent among the Nation’s young people. Inhalants are volatile substances that produce chemical vapors that can be inhaled to induce psychoactive or mind-altering effects. The different types of inhalants include: volatile solvents, gases, aerosols, and nitrites. Inhalants are abused in a number of ways; sniffing or snorting, spraying aerosols, bagging, huffing, and inhaling from balloons filled with nitrous oxide. Research has identified most inhalants as extremely toxic causing damage to brain and other parts of the nervous system; damage to an individual’s cognition, movement, vision, and hearing; damage to the heart, lungs, and kidneys; and high concentrations of inhalants can cause death by asphyxiation, suffocation, convulsion, coma, choking, and fatal injury. Those who abuse inhalants live in both urban and rural settings, are younger than 25, live in poverty, have a history of physical or sexual abuse, have poor grades, and are school dropouts.