Elissa Welle

Detroit Free Press

Community members combed the sidewalks and parks in southwest Detroit for three hours Saturday morning looking for small, silver canisters known as chargers or whippets, emptied of the nitrous oxide they contained by people seeking to get high.

It was the second cleanup hosted by the Southwest Detroit Whippet WipeOut Campaign Coalition. The group collected 7,969 whippets in the neighborhoods of Mexicantown.

Nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, is FDA-approved for use in medical settings to relieve pain. It’s also approved for consumption to foam whipped cream or spray vegetable oil, which means it can be easily found in convenience stores, grocery stores and gas stations.

However, the whippets found around Cadillac Urban Gardens were likely tossed by people who inhaled the gas for a quick high. Nitrous oxide quickly dissolves in the bloodstream and affects  the brain within seconds, providing users with a fast dose of euphoria. In rare cases, extensive long-term use of nitrous oxide can damage the nervous system and cause users to experience difficulty walking.

Volunteer Alexis Kellogg, of Detroit, said she found one bag containing nearly 100 whippets that she said characterized a typical whippet user, “maybe your weed smokers, your drinkers.”

“(Inside the bag) was the whippets, the blunt wraps, your mango juice and your Burger King,” Kellogg said.

One whippet might provide users with a 30- to 45-second high, which is why, Kellogg said, whippets can quickly pile up in the street.

“It only lasts for seconds,” Kellogg said. “Then you got to do your next one, your next one, next one and then when you’re done, you just throw it out and move on.”

Sylvia Gucken, coalition member representing the Ideal Group, said the group was formed in 2020 to address the surge in whippets littering the streets. Since then, their goals have expanded beyond cleanup to include education, proper recycling and decreasing sales through legislation.

They are also concerned about how easy they are to get in this part of Detroit. Gucken said they surveyed 123 gas stations and party stores in the 4th  Precinct of southwest Detroit and found 23 stores selling whippets.

Volunteers working to collect used whippet containers in a Detroit neighborhood on March 26, 2022.

State Sen. Stephanie Chang of Detroit has taken on the whippet problem. In 2018, she helped craft a law making illegal the “sale or delivery of nitrous oxide to individuals under the age of 18.”

Now, she’s working to stop the sale of crackers, flashlight-sized items used to pierce  a whippet and allows the user to quickly transfer the gas into a balloon for inhalation. Her first attempt at drafting legislation to address the problem listed crackers as drug paraphernalia, which would then prohibit their sale.