INHALANTS

Inhalant abuse is deadly serious and one of the most dangerous of "experimental behaviours." A common misconception about inhalant "sniffing", "snorting", "bagging" (fumes inhaled from a plastic bag), or "huffing" (inhalant soaked rag in the mouth) is that it is a childish fad to be equated with youthful experiments with cigarettes. Sniffing volatile solvents, which includes most inhalants, can cause severe damage to the brain and nervous system. By starving the body of oxygen or forcing the heart to beat more rapidly and erratically, inhalants can kill sniffers, most of whom are adolescents.
Sniffing highly concentrated amounts of the chemicals in solvents or aerosol sprays can directly induce heart failure and death. This is especially common from the abuse of fluorocarbon and butane-type gases. High concentrations of inhalants also cause death from suffocation by displacing oxygen in the lungs and then in the central nervous system causing breathing to cease.