Could laughing gas ban be pushing people to more dangerous drugs?
A young woman with a bright yellow balloon in her mouth giggles as a police car pulls up beside her. Next to her in the Fiat 500, her friend inhales gas from a blue balloon.
Both women are visibly high and still giggling as two officers jump out of their car. Their mission: a targeted operation to catch people suspected of inhaling banned laughing gas.
“I’ve just seen a couple of balloons, so we believe you’ve been using nos,” one of the officers, Spelthorne Borough Commander Matthew Walton, tells the women.
Since November, nos – nitrous oxide, commonly referred to as laughing gas – has been categorised as a Class C substance and banned for recreational use.
Prosecutions can lead to a two-year prison term.
But data from 22 police forces across the UK, put together by Sky News, reveal that fewer than 78 arrests were made for nitrous oxide possession in the first three months of the ban – and 16 people were charged.
Officers found used balloons and a large box containing several large canisters of nitrous oxide
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What is nitrous oxide?
‘No laughing matter’
The police conducting the operation last month in Staines had been tipped off by a local litter-picking organisation about nitrous oxide hotspots.
The officers find used balloons and a large box containing several large canisters of nitrous oxide. Suddenly, no one is laughing anymore.
A female officer conducts body searches. Up on the fence next to the women a sign warns of a £1,000 fine for anyone using nitrous oxide. “No laughing matter,” it reads.
Neither woman is arrested or charged; instead the driver, who appeared to be in her late teens, is offered a voluntary attendance interview.
“Depending on what she says we’ll make a disposal decision which could be a police caution, referral to Checkpoint (education on drug-driving) that they have to pay for themselves, like a speed awareness course,” says Commander Walton. “Or it could lead to a charge.”
Police say they are trying to strike a balance – but also be aware of the risks surrounding the gas.
“We’ve obviously got to balance it against all our other priorities,” Commander Walton told Sky News, emphasising the need for police to be proportionate in their response to young people out having fun.
But he warned that nitrous oxide could lead to other, more serious crimes.
“I think there is degree, especially with the age of the people we’ve got here, that where nos goes, cannabis follows. And sometimes harder drugs.”
The Metropolitan Police said officers prioritised offences which posed a more immediate risk
Notting Hill Carnival
Three friends sit on the side of a pavement at the Notting Hill Carnival. A barbecue throws smoke up in the air and children play next to a stall selling chicken and rice.
One of the friends is holding a silver balloon in her mouth and almost doesn’t notice when it whizzes away as she smiles. Straight away, she pulls out another. It’s noisy at Carnival but you can still hear the hiss of the balloon being gassed up.
A big silver canister sits between her legs and she laughs with friends when they realise they’ve been spotted by the Sky News camera. The nonchalance doesn’t go away even when three police officers walk in their direction.
But the officers walk on by, despite seeing the group doing balloons. A few moments later a patrol car also rolls by slowly. Still, no intervention.
Some 7,000 police officers were deployed to this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, the UK’s largest annual street party.
The Metropolitan Police said officers prioritised offences which posed a more immediate risk.
Police in Staines had been tipped off by a local litter-picking organisation
But it led to questions from drug policy experts about whether a ban on nitrous oxide was justified in the first place.
“Prohibitions generally can mutate behaviours and markets, but what they don’t do is stop people taking drugs,” said Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy.
Mr Rolles explained that the law is working to reduce the public profile of nitrous oxide in big events which are subject to high surveillance.
Indeed, discarded canisters from Carnival were down by roughly half this year. But Mr Rolles explains that it could mean repeat users carry on misusing in private, unsupervised spaces, and warns of another, potentially more dangerous consequence.
“If the result is to push people from nitrous oxide to other more harmful drugs then that’s not really a public health win.
“You might have a lot less litter but from a public health point of view things may have got worse.
“You can see how policy makers may try to mark this ban as a success but these things tend to displace the problem – either geographically where users carry on somewhere else – or they move to drugs which they can use in a more inconspicuous way.
“More drinking, more cannabis, more ketamine. And probably more dangerous.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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