The San Francisco Police Division have arrested a person on suspicion of possessing and distributing giant quantities of nitrous oxide exterior of Useless & Firm’s large homecoming exhibits in Golden Gate Park this previous weekend.
Per SF Gate, it wasn’t the one nitrous oxide-related inquest, with SFPD additionally issuing three citations and reserving one individual into San Francisco County Jail. The drug, familiarly referred to as ‘Whippets’ and identified by Grateful Useless followers as ‘Ice Chilly Fatties,’ has lengthy been related to the Deadhead group. It seems within the type of colourful, outsized balloons, which SF Gate notes had been seen deflated and littered throughout Golden Gate Park earlier than and after the Useless & Co present.
The drug was so in style final weekend that SFPD recognized a trailer containing 100 metallic tanks on Saturday, which they presumed had been full of nitrous oxide. Whereas the drug is just not unlawful to buy (nitrous oxide can be utilized for cooking and different sensible causes) it’s unlawful to distribute it for leisure use. Its illicit standing doesn’t deter everybody although; across the counterculture-centric Haight Road, a reddit person seen flyers promoting the supply of 20-pound tanks.
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When inhaled, nitrous oxide briefly cuts off oxygen to the mind, leading to a quick, intense excessive. Of their heyday, the Grateful Useless had been main proponents of the drug; there have been tanks current all through the recording of their 1969 album Aoxomoxoa, with Jerry Garcia attributing nitrous oxide to serving to encourage the music “What’s Change into of the Child”: “If you wish to make ‘What’s Change into of the Child’ work, I’ll let you know what to do: get a tank of nitrous oxide. Impulsively it really works!,” Garcia stated in a 1978 interview. “Once we had been doing our mixes on that we had a tank. We had been all there with hoses. Every kind of bizarre shit was occurring. It was completely mad, complete lunacy.”
The drug continued in relevance all through the ’70s throughout the counterculture motion, and SF Gate notes that there’s been a resurgence of the drug within the Bay Space of late. Followers exiting and getting into the park final weekend might hear dozens of ballon-strapped distributors promoting “Ice Chilly Fatties” alongside the standard bacon-wrapped sizzling canine distributors, and lots of skilled followers had been seen with their very own balloons for nitrous oxide consumption (SF Gate notes that usually, distributors will choose up used balloons and re-fill them, with one vendor claiming “The identical balloon might have been utilized by 20 folks over 13 states”).
Whereas the Useless & Co’s main three-night stand at Golden Gate Park gave the impression to be a blast, nitrous oxide stays a really harmful drug; it deprives your mind of oxygen, risking unconsciousness, nerve harm, and even sudden loss of life.