• Nitrous Cracker

A glamorous blonde in a little black dress tilts her head back to inhale nitrous oxide from a balloon in the middle of one of London’s trendiest streets. The ‘high’ that ensues — an intense feeling of euphoria, apparently lasting up to a minute — has been likened to taking a ‘snort’ of cocaine.

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Hence the reason that nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas, is more commonly known as ‘hippy crack’.

Unlike cocaine, though, it is not illegal. Nor, as the girl’s behaviour indicates, is there any shame or stigma about using it so publicly.

Could there be a more revealing — or disturbing — snapshot of what now constitutes a typical night out for a growing number of well-heeled, young people?

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Balloons of legal high laughing gas are readily available on the trendiest streets of London for as little as £3

Brick Lane, on the edge of the City, is synonymous with curry houses and bagel shops. It was once described by the London Evening Standard as the ‘most vibrant street’ in the capital.

Many might find that slightly euphemistic, especially after 11pm on a Friday or Saturday. So it was last weekend.

As the light began to fade, balloon sellers, including one with a fierce-looking Mohican haircut, swarmed onto the pavement like cockroaches and began touting for business.

‘Don’t be afraid to give it a try — it’s a legal high,’ they told passers-by, leaving no one in doubt about the balloons’ contents.

We counted six sellers — both male and female — patrolling the northern end of Brick Lane, between Cafe 101 and the Exit bar, with bags containing nitrous oxide canisters and other paraphernalia of their trade flung over their shoulders.

Some even had chip-and-pin machines to take payment from their middle-class clientele.

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It is against the law to sell the canisters (designed for use in the catering industry to dispense whipped cream) for ‘recreational’ purposes, but not to inflate balloons with the gas, then flog the balloons for a few pounds to anyone ill-advised enough to buy one.

It is a loophole that is being ruthlessly exploited, not just in Brick Lane, where the going rate for a ‘shot’ (that is, a balloon) is £3 or £5, but in towns and cities all over the country, where demand for ‘hippy crack’ seems to be increasing almost by the day.

Indeed, the phenomenon is becoming as widespread as glue-sniffing was in the Eighties.

The scenes we witnessed told their own story. A young woman in skinny, white jeans, balloon stuck to her lips, staggers along the street.

A group of girls, some who seem to be in their late-teens, eyes glazed, are propped up against walls and shop fronts, or slumped in doorways.

Two men in white shirts can be seen breathing in the gas side-by-side. Someone else narrowly avoids falling into the path of an oncoming car.

Nitrous Oxide can have devastating consequences such as stroke, blackouts, seizures and heart attacks

Discarded canisters are strewn in the gutter. In the background, the distinctive ‘click’ of more canisters being pierced and the ‘whoosh’ of more balloons being inflated can be heard.

All of this takes place under the noses of police who walk up and down the street in pairs, but are powerless to act, unless they suspect customers are under the age of 18.

‘You know that if you come to the bars round here at the weekend that someone will be selling it and no one is gong to stop you doing it,’ says Brick Lane regular Phoebe Halmat, who works in public relations.

‘You can buy as many [balloons] as you like with friends and do it all at the same time.

‘The effects depend on how much you’ve had to drink, or if you’re on anything else. You take the balloon and breathe in and out.

‘Then, you get light-headed and, quite often, hallucinate. It’s better to do it sitting down, as most people lose their balance. Some people even pass out.’

So, why on earth do young people do it? Nitrous oxide first gained popularity as the middle-class ‘drug’ of choice at music festivals around 2010, the same year Prince Harry was reported to have inhaled it at a party.

Nitrous Cracker

There is a perception that, unlike hard drugs, it has no harmful side-effects; after all, you don’t have to smoke it, snort it, or inject it into your veins to get ‘high’. More than 460,000 people aged 16 to 24 used nitrous oxide last year, which represents 7.6 per cent of that age group, according to the latest Home Office information. Only cannabis had more users.

Behind those figures is an even more shocking statistic that has gone almost unreported: nitrous oxide has been blamed for 17 deaths between 2006 and 2012.

The data was compiled from coroners’ reports by a research team at St George’s, University of London, funded by the Department of Health.

The team was disbanded a year ago, so the death toll has probably risen since then, but gone unreported.

Nitrous oxide dissolves in the bloodstream, reducing the amount of oxygen flowing to the brain and other vital organs. This can have devastating consequences, causing strokes, blackouts, seizures and heart attacks.

There is also a risk of asphyxiation, which can lead to brain damage, or death by asphyxiation.

Nitrous oxide first gained popularity as the middle-class ‘drug’ of choice at music festivals around 2010

Medically known as ‘hypoxia’, this occurs when someone stops breathing, or breathes too shallowly to meet their oxygen requirements — usually because they are overly sleepy from the sedative effect of the nitrous oxide.

Worryingly, doctors say they have no way of knowing how much nitrous oxide gas puts users at risk.

Regular users can also develop severe vitamin B deficiency, as the nitrous oxide blocks absorption of the vitamin. This can cause serious nerve damage, leading to tingling and numbness in the fingers, toes and other extremities, and even difficulties with walking and pains in the affected areas.

Nevertheless, it is widely available on the internet, as well as on the street. Websites such as Amazon, Gumtree and eBay are awash with adverts for nitrous oxide paraphernalia. An army of delivery drivers will drop off canisters at your front door (we bought 48 canisters for £53 from one company in Manchester which employed six drivers) within minutes of an order being placed online.

Because selling nitrous oxide for recreational use — as ‘hippy crack’, in other words — is banned, unscrupulous suppliers pretend they are selling it for other purposes.

They get round the law by marketing it as a whipping agent for desserts and whipped cream, in much the same way that the party drug mephedrone (‘meow meow’) used to be advertised as a plant fertiliser.

So, who are the major suppliers?

Today, following a Daily Mail investigation, some of those at the centre of the lucrative, but highly controversial, trade can be identified for the first time.

One is Ian Johnston. Mr Johnston is a 34-year-old law graduate and Plymouth-based nightclub owner.

He trades online as ‘WeLoveCream’ through his company AM-DM (Retail) Ltd. Remember that name. Mr Johnston boasts that he is now the biggest seller of ‘nitrous oxide cream chargers [a charger is a capsule containing nitrous oxide] & dispensers’ on eBay.

Taken at face value, his itemised sales, which are listed on the site, show that business is booming.

In the space of three days this week, they show he shifted 20,000 gas capsules for £6,000. According to the most recent accounts filed at Companies House, he also has stock worth £35,454.

When we contacted him, he insisted, in an email, that he was acting entirely within the law, and drew attention to his terms and conditions of sale, which state: ‘This product is not for sale to under 18s. We will refuse to sell to you if we suspect you intend to misuse our products.’ But the feedback from customers on eBay leaves little doubt what some of them are using his ‘products’ for.

One wrote: ‘Off my t***.’ A second revealed: ‘Helped my ecstasy comedown loads and made my girlfriend horny.’ A third simply said: ‘Mental.’

Many might also wonder why, on a social networking site, Mr Johnston posted adverts for supposed whipped cream chargers alongside flyers for clubbing events he was promoting, and whether, in fact, it is just a coincidence that the name of his company, when spelt backwards, is MDMA — the chemical name for ecstasy.

These questions were put to Mr Johnston but, by the time of publication, he had not replied.

Over in Bristol, shops sell small gas cylinders for as little as 30p — including four outlets in one road alone — and only in one of them was there a warning about its misuse on display.

Street vendors, like those in Brick Lane, also tout for business. Last Saturday, a group of young professionals could be seen buying balloons in a park, and then putting the balloons to their lips in unison, seemingly oblivious to the families with young children sitting on blankets nearby.

‘I don’t see any harm in it because I only do it three or four times a year,’ said one of the group, a 28-year-old male solicitor.

One of the biggest suppliers in the Bristol area is Anytime Cream, which offers a 24-hour delivery service. The person who runs it is Tom Barrett. Like Ian Johnston, Mr Barrett, 25, insists he isn’t doing anything wrong. ‘I don’t let people use it for laughing gas,’ he said.

Except a description of his website on its domain registration rather gives the game away. It says: ‘Anytime Cream deliver cream chargers [nitrous oxide capsules], laughing gas . . . ’

Mr Barrett, a former student of Bath College, declined to divulge how much he made from the business, saying only that he ‘didn’t do too bad’. In fact, he is doing better than that, if his Facebook page is anything to go by, which features photos of him snowboarding in the Alps and holidaying in Australia, Ibiza, Croatia and Lanzarote.

Back in Brick Lane, you couldn’t fail to notice that many of the nitrous oxide balloons were all the same colour: black. And printed on each one is: ‘blackballoonz.co.uk.’

Our inquiries led us to a computer repair shop in the East End and a man calling himself Danny Russell.

Mr Russell, 44, was not prepared to disclose much about himself, only that he has a background in mobile phones and, yes, he is the person who supplies the balloons (but, he claims, not the gas) to the Brick Lane team for a ‘small profit’.

He says the team (‘students, bar staff, homeless people’) sell around 500 balloons each weekend — a turnover of up to £2,500, as the sale price varies.

But this is no harmless pastime. The most recent victim of nitrous oxide — that we know of — was 21-year-old Jordan Guise, from Kidderminster, Worcs, head chef at the La Charniere restaurant in Beziers, southern France.

He was found dead at his flat in February this year. He had been experimenting with nitrous oxide and collapsed in the process of inhaling it, it emerged at the French inquest.

‘His boss rang to tell me Jordan had died,’ said his mother, Leesa Malpas. ‘He said Jordan had not turned up for work that night, so he went round to his flat and had found him on the floor, surrounded by canisters.’

‘There is a perception that, because it is legal, it is harmless. People do not understand how dangerous it is.’

Indeed. And, despite such deaths, the scene that unfolded in Brick Lane last weekend will begin all over again tonight.

Young people exploiting a legal loophole to buy laughing gas online from eBay and Amazon are putting their lives at risk, police warned yesterday.

Thousands of canisters of the drug are being purchased via the web giants and resold at huge profit in balloons at nightclubs, bars and festivals, an expert said.

The gas is decanted from the canisters – which can cost around 30p each when bought in bulk – into the balloons and then sold for around £5 a time.

Laughing as canisters that being bought for as little as 30p a time online then resold at festivals and nightclubs for £5 a time, experts have warned

The Government outlawed the sale of nitrous oxide gas as a cheap 'high' under the Psychoactive Substances Act last year.

But Detective Constable Jamie Thompson, a drug expert for Cheshire Police, said legislation is proving difficult to implement because of vague exemptions.

The gas is still readily available to caterers as it is used to whip cream and create frothy coffees and few checks appear to be made on customers.

Mr Thompson said some users even try to claim they possess the gas for medical use, including one suspect found with 300 canisters.

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'You can go on Amazon and buy as many as you want,' he said. 'These canisters are used in catering and have a legitimate purpose, but it can be misused.

'The mark up is high and profits are huge.'

The drug, which recreational users claim gives a brief sense of euphoria, has been linked to 17 deaths since 2006. Users can suffocate due to a lack of oxygen, and regular nitrous oxide use can lead to serious nerve damage.

The Home Office says retailers must ensure they only sell nitrous oxide to legitimate customers. But it is reviewing the legislation after two judges threw out cases because the gas could be interpreted as exempt, partly due to its 'analgesic effects'.

The Daily Mail discovered a thriving trade in the canisters on eBay and Amazon, with few apparent checks taking place.

Experts are warning that legislation around the illegal consumption of nitrous oxide is proving difficult to enforce because the canisters have legitimate uses, such as making whipped cream

On eBay, one company in the north of England sells 50 canisters for £26.79, with almost 3,000 units sold. Packs of 600 cost £190 – around 30p each.

A merchant on Amazon sells ten canisters for £17.30 with free delivery. This is the largest quantity available.

Speaking at the Police Federation's National Custody Seminar, Mr Thompson said the gas is banned for a reason. He added: 'There have been some difficulties with court cases where it has been argued it is medication.

'If it was administered in the back of an ambulance or a hospital I could understand this, but when it is being sold outside nightclubs in balloons probably not.

'This is something for the judges to sort out but we are having difficulty getting any significant convictions for possession with intent to supply.'

The Home Office said 300 retailers have either closed down or are no longer selling psychoactive substances due to the new legislation.

A spokesman added: 'Nitrous oxide is covered by the Psychoactive Substances Act and is illegal to supply for its psychoactive effect.

'However, the Act provides an exemption for medical products. Whether a substance is covered by this exemption is ultimately one for a court to determine based on the circumstances of each individual case.'

An eBay spokesman said vendors are banned from listing nitrous oxide as 'laughing gas', highlighting its intoxicating effect or selling paraphernalia that allows it to be misused.

He said: 'We work with regulators and the British Compressed Gases Association to ensure that all listings comply with the law.

'There are blocks in place to prevent the listing of illegal items, and we also constantly monitor our marketplace to enforce this.'