Nangs are a potent, easily accessible high. And they're dirt cheap—a balloon will set you back around $0.50, assuming you get the canisters delivered to your door. So it's no surprise nangs are becoming only more popular, something the 2015 Drug Trends Report made clear. In 2011, 21 percent of Australians had sucked on a nang balloon in the previous six months. Four years later, that number was up to 26 percent. And while most of us consider nangs a harmless, midnight top-up, the majority of Australia's media is convinced the gas is deadly, without much in the way of evidence. So we asked an expert for the truth, and did some digging.
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What Are Nangs?
Images by Ashley GoodallProfessor Gordian Fulde is a founding father of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine and the Director of Emergency Medicine at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital. According to him "they're not something I would jump up and down and say, 'It's going to kill you.'""The only way nangs really kill you is if they deprive the body of oxygen," Gordian explains. "Some people do stuff like put their head in bags and all sorts of shenanigans that actually exclude oxygen. And that's where the damage happens." However in his 34 years at St. Vincent's emergency room, Gordian has never treated a patient suffering only nang-related injuries, let alone a nang-related death.
Can Nangs Kill You?
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