Death By Huffing

By John DiConsiglio
Courtesy of Scholastic Choices

Ashley Upchurch was a top student with a pack of friends. She was never in trouble with her parents or teachers. As a result, no one suspected that Ashley and her friends were regularly getting high and had been doing so since they turned 11.

"We got good grades, people looked up to us, we were popular kids," Ashley, now 17, tells Choices, "and when we went behind closed doors, we were huffing duster."

Ashley was one of 2.6 million teenagers who get high by sniffing the fumes from inhalants--common products like lighter fluid and nail-polish remover. Most kids at school knew Ashley and her friends were huffing, but teachers and parents never had a clue. Unlike with other drugs, there were no telltale signs of abuse--no empty beer bottles and no scent of marijuana smoke to give them away. "They had no idea," Ashley says. "We did it everywhere--in cars, our bedrooms.

Ashley is one of the lucky ones. She quit huffing two years ago when she realized "these highs nearly destroyed my life." Each year, more than 100 teens die from inhalant abuse, some on their very first huff.

"People don't know just how common inhalant abuse is among young people," says Jennifer Caudle, director of family medicine at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. "Inhalants are easy to get because they're cheap and legal to buy."

Inhalants can be found pretty much everywhere: under the kitchen sink, in a closet, in a garage. "It was extremely easy to get the stuff I inhaled because you could buy it in a store, you could steal it, or you could even steal it from your parents' computer room," Ashley says.

Sniffing inhalants cuts the oxygen supply to your brain and lungs. The toxic fumes dissolve the protective covering around your brain cells. As this coating deteriorates, messages travel ever more slowly through your brain. That can cause muscle spasms, tremors, and permanent damage to your speech and memory. Inhalant abuse can also lead to problems with your heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys.

About half of all inhalant-related deaths are caused by accidents, like car crashes involving drivers who are high on inhalants. Most frightening is a fatal condition called sudden sniffing death syndrome. A person's very first sniff can speed up his or her heart so drastically that he or she suffers a heart attack and dies. "There's no way to predict it," says Christopher Cathcart of the Consumer Specialty Products Association, which represents companies that make household products. "Even if one kid is using something and getting a buzz, his friend can use the same product and die from the first sniff."

Her days of huffing behind her, Ashley warns anyone she can about the dangers of abusing inhalants. "You're not going to look glamorous when your parents find you dead in your room because you were huffing," she says.

Tuesday Talks with Tori: CSPA President Chris Cathcart on the Issues

Everyone knows there are many aspects to dealing with the issue of inhalant abuse. Today, I sat down with Chris Cathcart, President of the Consumer Specialty Products Association, ACE Board Secretary and father of four to get his perspective on how industry and ACE can work effectively to protect our children and communities. For more information on CSPA visit their homepage at http://www.cspa.org/

Cathcart on...
CSPA’s involvement with ACE
Chris Cathcart has been involved with the Alliance for Consumer Education since the foundation’s launch in 2000. This involvement and the strong partnership between CSPA and ACE proves his belief that it is vital for the industry to team up with non-industry in order to educate the public about health and safety risks associated with common products. “We are concerned parents and educators as well, and we saw a growing concern that children could misuse products in ways that we couldn’t even imagine.” This concern led to the development of ACE, which Cathcart believes has a unique role because “its goal is to reach out to any and every consumer.”

Being a parent
As a father of four, Cathcart realizes that, while they may think you’re hovering, “you sort of have to keep a close eye on your kids, because there is a lightning fast spread of information through the internet which allows your kids to find out anything.” He believes that parents, educators and guardians are going to have to change and adapt because the internet is not going away, and the ways of communicating are changing constantly. ACE is helping with this adaptation by developing a world in Second Life and creating social networking pages on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Squidoo. Cathcart also emphasizes the importance of talking to children. He references a statistic from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America that shows when a parent talks to their child about inhalant abuse, that child is half as likely to even try an inhalant.

ACE’s accomplishments
Chris Cathcart has been the secretary of ACE’s board for the foundations entire existence, and has watched ACE grow and evolve for the past eight years. “ACE has grown in so many remarkable ways. The staff’s ingenuity to get into the school systems and really get out there amazes me. Every week, their reach grows exponentially.”