Known by such street names as huffing, sniffing and wanging, the dangerous habit of getting high by inhaling the fumes of common household products is estimated to claim the lives of more than a thousand children each year. Many other young people, including some first-time users, are left with serious respiratory problems and permanent brain damage.
"Surveys show that approximately one out of every five American children will experiment with inhalants before they complete eighth grade," said Matthew Howard, Ph.D., an assistant professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of two recently published studies on inhalant abuse among children. He is one of the few scholars in the nation doing research on the issue.
Although March is designated as National Inhalant Abuse Awareness Month, information about the terrible toll inhalant abuse is inflicting does not seem to be reaching the nation's parents, much less their children.
"I don' t think these kids have any idea how dangerous inhaling these substances can be," Howard said. "One or two kids in a group will experiment with something and before you know it, you have a mini-epidemic on your hands. Some kids just don't get the message until a friend ends up dead or in the hospital. Parents need to know that hundreds of items commonly found in the home are being inhaled by kids seeking a quick buzz, a high that can easily turn deadly."
Inhalant abuse has joined alcohol and marijuana as one of the top three drugs of choice among children of grade-school age. The National Adolescent Student Health Survey found that 21 percent of eighth graders reported having tried inhalants, compared with only 15 percent for marijuana and 5 percent for cocaine. The most commonly reported age of first inhalant usage is just before a child's twelfth birthday.
Howard's studies, which focus on juveniles on probation in Utah and on American Indian youths living in Seattle, found surprising differences in the frequencies of inhalant usage. His research, which was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism, is published in the January 1999 issues of the British journal Addiction and the American journal Addictive Behaviors.
In the Utah study, more than a third of children on probation reported some history of inhalant use, with nearly 20 percent having abused inhalants in the last year. And while inhalant abuse is known to be rampant on some American Indian reservations, only 12.3 percent of Indian youths living in urban Seattle reported any experience with inhalants, a rate considerably lower than the national average.
The variance in usage rates is not too surprising, Howard said, because inhalant abuse tends to occur in isolated pockets. Much like the latest teen craze in clothes or music, inhalant abuse often establishes a toehold among a small group of users and then spreads like wildfire within a community, steadily increasing in popularity until the fad fizzles or something unfortunate happens.
Howard, who teaches courses on drug abuse at Washington University's George Warren Brown School of Social Work, said that inhalant abuse continues to be a huge problem not only in the United States, but also overseas. Inhalant abuse is common among young people in Britain and Japan, and is especially popular among poor children in the developing countries of Asia and Latin and South America. Recent reports estimate that more than 20 million Central and South American youth abuse inhalants on a regular basis.
In the United States, inhalants seem to be most popular among poor children and adults living in small isolated communities with populations in the 50,000 range. But pockets of abuse can be found in both affluent and poor neighborhoods across the nation and in many urban settings, Howard said.
Despite widespread inhalant use and its serious consequences, Howard is surprised that the issue receives relatively little attention from the nation's anti-drug abuse establishment. Even among drug abuse experts there is often little expertise or knowledge about inhalant abuse, said Howard,
National research agencies offer relatively few grants for the study of inhalant abuse, and many questions remain unanswered. Not much is known, for instance, about how some inhalants act on the body and whether or not these substances are physically addictive.
What is known, at least anecdotally, is that inhalant abuse can cause serious and potentially irreversible damage to the brain, bone marrow, liver and kidneys. More than one thousand common household products are known to be abused by inhalers, including everything from typewriter correction fluid to colored markers. Other commonly abused inhalants are gasoline, spray paint, model glue, air freshener and the propellant from empty pressurized spray cans, including those for whipped cream and hair sprays.
Most inhalants produce a brief dizzying high similar in some ways to alcohol, but side effects can include violent behavior, hallucinations, convulsions, drowsiness and loss of consciousness. Inhalants are known to sensitize the heart, sometimes causing death from cardiac arrest or suffocation.
Inhalant use has been an on-again, off-again problem for decades, but recent reports suggest that the use of inhalants among children may be on the rise. In 1996, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse estimated that the nation had about 805,000 new inhalant users, up from 382,000 in 1991. The problem seems to be worst among youth in the 10-to-12 age range, when other drugs are still hard to obtain and kids are both highly curious and ill-informed about risks. Inhalant use tends to decline after high school.
Howard's recently published studies offer a number of interesting insights into the world of inhalant abuse.
"Both studies found that inhalant abusers had more early aggressive and delinquent conduct and greater tendencies to have thought about and perhaps tried to commit suicide," Howard said. "Inhalant abusers also tended to be more involved in substance-related criminal activity and gang membership."
His work also indicates that children who exhibit aggression and other anti-social behaviors at an early age may be more prone to future inhalant abuse.
"Early aggressive, anti-social and sensation-seeking behaviors are red flags that seem to precede and predict later inhalant abuse," Howard said. "Both studies show that inhalant abusers are more likely to have significant levels of personal emotional problems and to come from dysfunctional families with a high incidence of alcohol dependence."
The average age of first inhalant abuse among children in his studies also was quite young--about age 13.
"Inhalants are among the most common and the earliest drugs used by children," Howard said."Sadly, they also are one of the leading causes of drug abuse deaths among adolescents."
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Editors: Howard can be reached at his office (314) 935-4957 or at home (314) 935-863-2080; or via e-mail at [email protected].
Contact Steve Infanti of Dick Jones Communications at 814-867-1963 or [email protected] if you need any assistance.
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