Latest Drug in Middle School

This is kinda long but if I had children at home I would want to know about it - Darlene

Latest Drug in Middle School - 'Dusting'

First, I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for its crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were # 2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn’t allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs.

I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs.

I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them.

On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer.

On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.

I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM.

I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids’ ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. It's just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said so.

Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. It's a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas. Heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out. That's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. IT KILLS YOU.

The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. IT'S NOT AN OVERDOSE. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in. If not you die within 2 seconds of finishing 'the hit.' That’s why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open. The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe its huffing. And that's why it’s more accepted. There is no chemical reaction, no strong odor. It doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known.

It's easy to say hey, it's my life and I'll do what I want. But it isn't. Others are always affected. This has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed up. One won't talk about it. T he other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them.

After Kyle died another story came out. A probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this 'new' way of getting high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house.

We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new and some 'professionals' do know about. It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it. April 2nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus.


This Officer is asking for everyone who receives this email to forward it to everyone in their address book, even Law Enforcement Officers!
Dr. Michael D. DiNicola
Coordinator for Guidance & Counseling Services
Berkeley County School District
P. O. Box 608
Moncks Corner, SC 29461
Office: 843-899-8614
Cell: 843-312-2637
Fax: 843-899-8790

 

My mom was telling me about this.

Very sad. I have a few friends that like to do this...makes me sick to my stomach. I've tried to tell them how f'ed up it is...

 

What a really sad story and to think that you would believe it to be harmless.

duly forwarded

 

This isn't new, and it isn't limited to this one brand of dust remover. ANY inhalent is often abused by teens, including roach spray, air freshener, and deoderant. A friend's son died almost 12 years ago from concentrating and inhaling spray paint from a paper bag. It used to be called "huffing".

Actually, now that I think about it, we used to do the same thing when I was in high school. Except we used Reddi-Whip and called it "doing whip-its". Ack.

 

thats just wrong that story but whats even worse is that at my school other kids stab each for smokes and drugs.. its wrong.

 

Ya know, as sad as this tale is, and I've been there though not to that extent, I have to really disagree with the following statement:

With all the chemicals that every household has from a drain cleaner to FeBreeze, one can't lock up all their stuff on a daily basis just to prevent an occurrence like this. Kid's will always find a way to get 'high' if they're determined enough. Be it 'huffing' or be it strangling themselves, hopefully temporarily.

The operative word is 'why'? A policeman's son, a concerned mothers questioning weekly of his behaviour, man that's pressure that I couldn't take either.

What about this pill popping epidemic that's going on now, and I don't mean the Vicodins etc., which will get one high, but taking anything out of the medicine chest and thinking it may do the same.

I think that the pill popping adults also have a role to play in this scenario along with the pharmaceutical pushers that keep telling you, hey, take a pill, don't you feel better now?

Kids see and copy what their parents do, it's only natural. I'm not saying that parents are inherently bad, it's just the whole message by society that is being sent.

I just wish there was a way to close Pandora's box of the need to have 'feel good' stuff and make it less 'cool'.

 

Thats all true, kids will try things you would never expect but people should (need to be) aware of what is being used and keep track of it in your household, plus let your kids know of the dangers of doing it, most think there is none connected to what they're doing. There are new potions popping up all the time and until a kid dies it is not illegal.

 

Just remembered seeing on tv where a kid died at a rave never doing a drug before he drank something the DJ brought in a 5 gallon water bottle. I can't think of the name right now but it was supposed to be taken a cap full at a time where this kid unaware was drinking large amounts. I believe he froze to death in the desert, becoming unable to move.
Always something new

 

My wife's cousin recently lost his 18 year old son to an overdose.
Drug awareness certainly needs to be taught more strongly in the schools. Whether that would help, I don't know.
Kids fold to peer pressure to easily.
This is a big issue (school-age substance abuse) and really needs to be addressed at a Local, State, and National level.
I know that all sounds like generic rhetoric but something DOES need to be done. There was a time when the the only drug-related deaths were either long time addicts or accidental overdoses.
Now they are dying younger and younger.

 

The warnings are on the cans, literally. Thats about as much as one can hope for, along with doing the best to raise our children correctly. More kids are killed by cars every year, but we can't take those off the streets, right?

 

Warnings are also on cigarette packs and liqueur bottles, but does anyone heed them?
Taking things off the market doesn't work, either. There is always something out there to be abused.
Awareness education is about the only way to deal with something that is finding it's way into younger and younger age groups.
Unfortunately, telling graphic death stories to young kids isn't politically correct.

 

yeah, it's a horrible story, but it's not new...i first heard about people doing it about 2 years ago...fortunately, nobody at our school does it.

 

I agree with augie, a drug-sniffing dog in the house and weekly interrogations...so much for trust. Kids rebel. Nothing has changed. We lost a friend to sniffing glue back in the seventies, and more kids drink themselves to death than all other drugs combined every year.
My kids made it through. I did talk to them about drugs and drinking. I told them about the drugs I did, and the effects they had. I told them how great they could make you feel, how bad things could turn, and how crappy you felt the next day, and how much money I wasted on them (and cigarettes and booze). Never once did I think they wouldn't do drugs. I let them go to parties. They told me openly when they were going and where. I knew where they were. They had curfews which were extended on weekends when they phoned from known homes.
My kids grew up with a dad who smoked pot with his friends regularly. I was done with all the chemical crap by then. We thought we hid it from our kids. We found out later we weren't as successful as we thought, but none of us ever lied to our kids about it when asked. None of our friends' kids or my kids have drug or drinking problems. My oldest daughter smokes cigarettes and I don't know why.
The irony of this whole mess is, if that poor kid was sitting on his bed, smoking a joint, even after his dad beat the crap out of him, he'd still be alive today.

@LauraR. Laura I can't necessarily condone how I raised my kids, that was the culture of our group of friends that have stuck together even to today. regardless, there is no room for hypocrisy or lack of trust or freedom. Also very important we had a great family atmosphere and open discussion about any subject.

 

The real reason it happens? They aren't supposed to do it. Drugs are dangerous, so they're illegal. Cigarette's are dangerous, but legal. So are Alcohol, Guns, and Republicans.

The latter are far less dangerous, because they're regulated and maintained by government agencies. (Except the Republicans, those are always in lethal doses.) Instead of bowing to hysteria, and forcing addicts to go get it from people who give you as much as you can afford, they should be legal, and available from pharmacy's. Control the process and make them safe, instead of keeping them in the open market where they get cut with Clorox or other less safe substances.

On the original subject, this is not any different at all from huffing, except that there's no visual traces like you get with paint. It's the spray accellerant which is the problem.

 

We had a conversation similar to this last night with some friends of ours. They were asking our opinion about talking to their 9 year old daughter about puberty and sex and such. They were considering holding off on a few of the topics until she was older, but I told them that leaving it out of reach at home leads to greater temptation later. I firmly believe that in order to properly arm our children, we have to feed them all this information and have open discussions about it.

The thing about this particular story is that it has to do with a trend called Huffing. It has been around for 10-15 years now and has claimed at least as many lives as some of the harder drugs out there. Huffing usually involves inhaling the propellant from aerosol products. Spray paint, Compressed air cans, furniture polish, etc. The reason huffing has taken off with the pre-teen to early teen crowd is accessability. How many of us have cans of spray paint, compressed air, etc laying around the house??

I know that a lot of parents who are very responsible just never think about these things, but unfortunately, we have to start. We need to explain to our kids why it is so dngerous. I have to admit, I have a bit of a leg up on these topics with my medical background, my son knows that when I tell him something is going to kill him if he does it that I am not giving him a BS line.

Thanks for the thread Darlene. Hope everyone can get something useful from here.

~C

 

I posted this not for the act it self rather for the product used. I'm sure there is a long list of products used to get high from but I am not familiar with all of them. Have no idea how old this email is, perhaps it's been circulating for years. Some of my children have teens and preteens at home so any information they are armed with is invaluable I believe.

 

Legalize and control the process of drugs doesn't stop overdosing, nor deaths. Legalizing cigarettes and alcohol certainly didn't slow the number of casualties.

Legalizing something like that merely serves to pad the pockets of someone else legally. It doesn't help the situation whatsoever.

 

Right now it's padding the pockets of drug lords and real criminals, look back on Prohibition some of the people who profited from that. Of course after it ended they switched to protection (today known as Insurance) prostitution and drugs.

PS, plus legalizing will limit the danger to the user (harsh, I know) and not so much the rest of the population.

 

When my children were in drivers education they were shown pictures of bodies, broken, bloody, some small children. At the time I thought it to be improper but my oldest daughter said it certainly drove the message home with her.
Of course my kids learned early on what information to keep from me otherwise I would be at the school in a heartbeat.

 

we had heard about this a while ago.
I now require ID to sell canned air.

 

Hum, like spray paint, things crop up faster then you can keep.

 

I have been following this post with keen interest,as many here know i am a recovering alcoholic who is paying a great price('mentally/physically and financially) for my past faults.
i and the group i attend have discussed many times the question of how to stop our offspring falling into the habits of abuse but there do not seem to be any hard and fast answers.
a lot has to do with peer pressure and and not wanting to be the odd one out in your peer group and this is the time that the character of the individual has to be strong and resist.
with so many products available now to test your senses it is difficult to know how to control them, an outright ban just drives it underground where the less scrupulous members of society will jump in to make a fast buck,
regulation does not seem to be able to agree how to enforce itself in a responsible way.
so is the answer teaching our kids about abuse of these things,if they will not listen then that does not work either.
using the media to advertise these thing E.G on play station packs i.pods and such other things our kids come into contact with on a daily basis or will this just heighten the awareness of these products??
I certainly don't have the answers but kids are dieing every day while the regulators just sit on there hands and say "what can we do?"
i have been out of the loop for a long time now my daughter is 37 and a Doctor so i am immensely proud of her,she does not smoke and drinks in moderation which she says she learned to control because of the state she saw me some nights (how shaming is that)
as for other products i have very little idea what the kids of today use or will find tomorrow but can only look at the news with horror every night when another son or daughter dies.

 

just an afterthought to my post, i suppose people of my generation have to bear a large part of the blame for the drug culture.
in the 60s a lot of us served in the military (Viet-Vets) and we brought some of the milder drugs home with us POT/SPEED /PURPLE HEARTS/BLACK BOMBERS and such, they are soft by today's standards but from little acorns grow mighty oak trees.

 

my 15 year old friend trevor does this kind of thing all the time.. I tried it once, it's kind of a cool high, but after I heard that the stuff can kill I haven't done it since... he still does it though :/ pretty much all my friends think that theres no way it can harm them. I hope none of them end up like that kid trev used to be a pothead, but hes on probation so hes been experimenting with other crap just because it wont show up on the UA. oxycodone, dust off, whippits, shrooms, etc..

 

I was worried about posting this to begin with thinking it would be giving information to those who would end up trying it rather than to parents to be aware. As it looks youngsters already know about it (pity).

@ splitt3r good for you for not taking any chances. You can do something over again and then that one fatal time will take you.

 

The hard part of controlling these things is that no matter how many controls you put into place, someone is always willing to break/bend the law to make a buck. I have an acquaintance of mine who makes a living selling non-legal herbal supplement...... OK, so it's really marijuana, but you know what I meant... what kills me is that this guy has no legal job, but still has a home and a car and always plenty of cash. Has health insurance on his whole family that he pays for out of pocket. I mean really. THe kicker is that the police swing by about once a month and he never gets busted... *sigh* must be freaking nice.....

but that, in a nutshell, is why making something illegal doesn't work....

I had a long talk with my son this weekend about things like that. Found a can of compressed air at the store on Saturday and we chatted about it. He said he had no idea about that, so I figure let him know and see what happens. He is a pretty smart kid tho....

~C

 

Basically, anything that comes in a spray can with a propellant. Literally.

 

true. very true. Even that redi-whip stuff... hence the term whippets...


~C

 

Yup, like I said in my first post t'other day, we used to do whip-its in high school 20 years ago. This isn't anything like new.

 

This is one you don't want to see bumped too often.. No offense of course... It seems the trend has graduated, went to college and dropped out, and has made it's way to the elders..

From my home town of DuBois, PA

 

Geez, should know better at that age.