Opinion: Nangs. If you know what a nang is you will probably think they are a bit of fun.
If you don't know, you will have probably seen the little silver canisters littered around.
Before they're discarded, they're used for a quick euphoric high. Each cannister is filled with nitrous oxide, NOS or laughing gas.
Heaps of people are doing them to make themselves giggle. There are even businesses devoted to selling these things.
Yet while lots of us are hoovering up nangs for fun, there's a massive information vacuum.
The laws around them are murky - it's legal to use them, but illegal to sell them, unless you sell them in a legal way. Which is - solely for the purpose of whipping cream.
But with boxes full of them flying off the shelves at dairies, vape shops and online party stores across the country - I can assure you, there's not a cake-baking phenomenon going on. It's just a quick and easy-to-come-by high.
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So, are nangs a dangerous drug or harmless fun?
They're the lowest drug on the New Zealand drug harm index.
When it comes to getting high, it doesn't get any lower - even kava is considered more dangerous. (Alcohol is the highest FYI.)
Yet in a small number of people - people who take too many, for too many days in a row - or people who have B12 deficiencies - there can be severe side effects.
I met a neurologist at Auckland Hospital who told me about nine patients he's seen already this year, all young people turning up unable to walk. Quad or tetraplegic. Months after their admission, some of them are still using a walking aide to get around.
But what do we know about these things, why aren't we regulating who can sell them - and how those buying them can keep themselves safe?
Are we just pretending as a nation that this many young people need to whip a tonne of cream at midnight?
The UK has gone hard and is banning them - making nangs a class C drug. It'll soon be illegal to have them for anything other than whipping cream. Anyone caught using them could be sent away for two years.
Here we're taking way more moderate steps - but change could be coming.
Medsafe told me that it is "actively looking at whether mechanisms in the Medicines Act can be used to further restrict the retail supply of these products."
But let's get real about nangs. Nangs are a part of Kiwi life now.
There's no point in leaving this to some sort of Wild West regulation by dairy owners.
And Medsafe's plan to potentially use the law to restrict their sale won't work either - it'll just create a black market.
There's no point in trying to lock these away when there are way more harmful illegal and legal drugs (alcohol) out there.
Let's grow up. We could actually have some sensible drug policy around this. Take out the hysteria and focus on the actual harm which isn't much.
Here's a starter from me:
- Make a proper new law allowing nitrous use for over 18s.
- Sell them somewhere appropriate, like bottle shops, for exactly what they're going to be used for. No more of this crap that they're for catering.
- And put them in plain boxes, with sensible safety advice.
Nangs would be much safer this way.
Please be careful with your nangs out there. And be a tidy Kiwi and pick up your used canisters.
Patrick Gower is the host of Paddy Gower Has Issues on Three and ThreeNow.
