Articles
- Teens Get High with One Household Huff April 8, 2010 By LARA SALAHI, COURTNEY HUTCHISON, ANNA WILD and RICHARD BESSER, MD Lara Salahi More from Lara » Reporter Follow @LaraSalahi1 Richard Besser More from Richard » Chief Health and Medical Editor Follow @DrRichardBesser Lara Salahi More from Lara » Follow @BostonLara via In 7th grade, Riley Foster, 16, of Indianapolis, Ind., would hide out in his garage after school and incessantly inhale gasoline for hours. A one-time athlete, good student, and social teen, Riley became distant and withdrawn. Riley was addicted to huffing gasoline, but his parents did not know it. "He didn't spend as much time with the family, he slept more, he was more argumentative and more irritated," said Riley's mother, Tammie Foster. Riley first experimented with inhalants at age 12 when he sniffed a can of duster at a friend's house. Teens Get High on Huffing "It's just kind of like taking your head away from your body," he said. "The first time I ended up blacking out." The more he inhaled, the more he liked it, he said. And the abuse quickly escalated. "It is such a short high, so you can't pull yourself away from it," said Riley. Foster said she did not know her son was using inhalants until she found Riley blacked out in the garage from an overdose. "He was stumbling, his speech was extremely slurred, he was belligerent," Foster said. "I was scared to death that he was going to die."
- Huffing can kill, parents are told Schools need to make education about inhalant abuse a priority, a state counselors group said. October 28, 2005 | By Connie Langland INQUIRER STAFF WRITERA school counselors group sounded a fresh alarm yesterday about adolescent inhalant abuse - known widely as huffing. And the warning was aimed at an unwary audience: parents. "This affects kids you'd never suspect - preadolescents, kids in middle school," said Chris Laudo, president of the Pennsylvania School Counselors Association, speaking at an event to publicize the issue at the Lower Merion school administration building. Ordinary household items with the potential for abuse were on display: an aerosol air freshener, canned whipped cream, felt-tip markers and cleaning products.
FEATURED ARTICLES
- Inhalants are making a comeback By Ed Heard and Ed Heard,Sun Staff Writer | April 4, 1994 The rubber glue in the shop class at Atholton High School is intended to paste together wooden cars and other class projects. But for 15-year-old Steve, the material was a first lesson in getting high.Howard County police and school health officials say the use of inhalants, common household substances, is making a comeback with youths who want to experiment with drugs.That's why school officials have mailed pamphlets on inhalants to the parents of elementary, middle and high school students who may not suspect they have substances around their homes that their children could use to get high.
- 3 8th-graders treated after abusing inhalant
By Howard Libit and Howard Libit,Sun Staff Writer | October 20, 1994
In a sign of the growing problem of inhalant abuse in Howard County, three eighth-grade boys at Mount View Middle School in Marriottsville were taken to an area hospital yesterday after sniffing nail polish remover.Another eighth-grader apparently had brought the nail polish remover to school in a plastic container inside a plastic bag, said Patti Caplan, a school spokeswoman. The three boys were overcome while sniffing it shortly after 1 p.m., she said.One of the three was taken by ambulance to Howard County General Hospital; the other two were taken there by their parents, said Howard County police spokesman Sgt. Steven Keller - Inhalant abuse incidents still rare, but rising 5% of drug treatment cases tied to fume-sniffing
By Laura Lippman and Laura Lippman,Staff Writer Staff writer Rafael Alvarez contributed to this article | August 1, 1992
Death by inhalant abuse is so rare in Maryland that the medical examiner's office throws it into the catch-all classification known as "other."But statistics from the state's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration indicate that the habit of sniffing butane, gasoline and other petroleum distillates has a small, but growing following.Inhalants were cited by 5.3 percent of all admissions in the state's drug and alcohol treatment programs in 1991, said the administration's director, Rick Sampson, up from 3.3 percent in 1990