A 12-year-old boy has died in New Zealand after huffing aerosol deodorant.
The boy had been huffing, also known as chroming, with two friends at the bus stop on Hamilton’s Tasman Road and was told off by a member of the public, the Coroner has confirmed.
He ran across the road while still huffing and collapsed. Members of the public and ambulance staff tried to help him, but he could not be revived.
“The child ingested an inhalant believed to be a Dove deodorant can,” a spokesperson for the Coroner’s office said.
Police were called to the sudden death about 6.50pm on Saturday, a spokesperson said.
”There are no suspicious circumstances, and the death will be referred to the Coroner,” a police media spokesperson said.
St John said paramedics were notified of a medical event and sent one ambulance and a rapid response vehicle.
Tasman Road runs behind the shopping complex Te Awa The Base.
Earlier this year the owner of a Hamilton Laundromat said a group of about a dozen young people had been loitering in his business and huffing deodorant.
Sam Sheikh has hours of CCTV where the young people could be seen inhaling a substance from a deodorant can.
He said they often got so high they fainted, spit blood and climbed into the hazardous crawlspace behind the high-voltage, industrial washing machines, driving away customers in the process.
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She spent more than a week in hospital before dying.
Fiona Trevelyan, the chief executive of Odyssey, an organisation that provides drug treatment to young people in the Waikato, previously told Stuff: “Overall, we have observed an upward trend in rangatahi self-reporting use of inhalants or nitrous products in our Youth INtact service”.
“Before 2022, around 5 per cent of rangatahi reported using inhalants or nitrous products. Between 2022 and 2023 there has been a significant increase.
“In 2022, 18 per cent of those surveyed reported using inhalants and nitrous products. In 2023 that number now sits at 53 per cent.”
However, she said this increase could be largely attributed to an increase in nitrous products.
The most accurate drug usage data is gathered via regular waste water testing, but this was impossible due to the nature of an aerosol drug.
Drug services instead have to rely on anecdotal evidence to ascertain whether use is increasing.
In the mid-2000s, following inquests into six huffing deaths, Christchurch and Wellington coroners called on the government to warn young people off the practice.
This article was reproduced with permission from Stuff.
