It's now illegal for anyone under 21 to buy canned whipped cream in New York | Hacker News Reader

It's now illegal for anyone under 21 to buy canned whipped cream in New York

insider.com

50 pointscwwc43 comments

This article (and every other article I can find on the ban) conflates whipped cream cans[1] with whipped cream chargers[2], which is what the law[3] bans.

[1] https://www.gogetdelivery.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/...

[2] https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/b73db9f0-6258-47a6-9954-bd7...

[3] https://legiscan.com/NY/text/A00754/2021

Basically, it's banning the for-professional-use-only pure N2O cartridges, not your home kitchen instant whipped cream.

Are these really considered for professional use only in US? Here we use them at home since the result is infinitely better than the instant whipped cream variants.

What beautiful land of personal freedom are you calling from, friend?

More or less. My local grocery stores don't carry the device or the cartridges.

Professional or higher end cooking stores might carry them, but the easiest place to get them near me would be a head shop (the places that sell pipes and bongs and what not, if that phrase doesn't internationalize well). Virtually all the head shops near me carry both the device and the cartridge.

I love observing NYC, SF, and LA policies like this because it's so ridiculous.

An under 21 year old can go shoot up any substance - with the guarantee that the police won't touch them - at any of the safe injection sites, but progessive-heaven forbid that they want some whipped cream for their ice cream or want to try a recipe that included using one of these gas cartridges.

Canisters on the street? A disturbing eye sore that must be dealt with swiftly. Needles on the street? A sign of progressive tolerance and a reminder that drug users are the real victims.

It is ridiculous on the surface, I guess.

But those same progressive governments still make it illegal to sell those drugs which can are used in the safe injection sites.

So, this seems consistent to me, even if ridiculous on the surface, because those more dangerous substances are treated the same.

No one’s getting arrested for inhaling no2, just like people are not getting arrested for smoking weed or for shooting up in the safe sites

Edit for clarity: the only thing that’s actually ridiculous about it IMO is that, obviously, there’s a huge proportion of people, under 21, buying whipped cream that aren’t doing it to get high

Just use your whip cream in the safe injection sites. Problem solved.

That's a non equivalency

Ability to purchase a substance is not the same as being provided a space to use a substance obtained elsewhere safely to curb overdoses

These policies are about reducing harm, prohibition itself increases harm

You might want to do some research before proffering an ill-informed opinion. In particular, I would look up "Harm Reduction" which is a relatively new strategy. Heroin is already illegal, so it can't be made any more illegal. What we can do is provide a place for addicts to safely use the drug while they interface with members of the community trying to help them. We are learning the dangers of nitrous oxide, so the first logical step is to limit sales of it.

Friends of Hsieh claim that he was using up to 50 cartridges of Nitrous Oxide each day and often in public or during meetings. Witnesses described his home and bedroom being littered with hundreds of used cartridges

https://www.addictioncenter.com/news/2021/11/zappos-ceo-tony...

Republicans know that strategy and reject it. Their strategy is more about personal responsibility.

In fact, I'd expect a theoretical Republican leadership in NYC to ban the cool-whip too. For harm reduction, wouldn't allowing it be better if it's safer than the alternatives?

No the strategy is associate drugs with minorities to make being a minority illegal.

Ehrlichman told Baum. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

This is an unverified quote from someone last in office in 1969, about president Nixon who he may have had a grudge against. But if so, which minority is being targeted with the cool-whip ban?

People in the counter culture who are against war mongering are historically considered to be a minority

The term "minority" is not only about race

Nobody said it was only race.

I'm wondering why the question was presented in the first place then, as this is in the quote:

>make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana

I asked which minority is being targeted, not which race. Hippies and anti-war aren't a race either.

Hippies and anti-war are the minority, which is specified in the quote. Hence my clarification. So why was the question presented?

My apologies, I appear to have misunderstood the comment chain. The commenter saying that the whip cream law discriminates against minorities is incorrect.

Prohibition itself does discriminate against minorities but age regulation does not, in fact age regulation of psychoactive substances is a good step in the right direction away from hard-line prohibitionist policies.

NYC is the biggest and densest city in the US, so it has unique challenges. For example, what are the cops supposed to do to heroin addicts? Jail them repeatedly, send them elsewhere, or what, give the death penalty? Wherever you live isn't like NYC except more Republican, so you can't focus on small details like the right to buy cool-whip.

But SF truly is horribly mismanaged. Compare it to other dense cities. I'm glad I never have to work there again.

Could just have drugs be legal for those of age if they do them in private spaces.

1) Then you wouldn't have shady operations and drug cartels producing and selling drugs and the illegality, by nature, supporting said cartels

2) Jails wouldn't already be full

3) Cops and courts wouldn't have to spend so many resources trying to enforce the dumb laws.

Your argument is not consistent, it is still illegal to use or poses illegal drugs; only exception is safe drug use sites, where you can use canisters.

And your last part has no actual real point, instead just a strawman. (example: the more bullet holes and reported gun deaths you find the more traditional societal values the place got).

Some advice: being snarky while making your point doesn't help the argument in any favorable way.

This is kind of silly. Nitrous oxide is not harmful unless there is so much of it, it displaces the air and causes suffocation, or it is abused in such quantity that it causes neurological issues like persistent numbness. They should make it illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase Scotchguard and the other harmful aerosols that are popular inhalents, such as air freshener, deodorant, fabric protector, hair spray, vegetable oil spray, and spray paint. Those things hurt kids. No one has died or even hurt themselves, not ever, inhaling the nitrous from whipped creme or whip creme chargers, though people have suffocated on occasion when using actual nitrous tanks.

> No one has died or even hurt themselves, not ever, inhaling the nitrous from whipped creme

Sadly, not true (though it's rare) https://www.yourerie.com/news/local-news/centre-county-coron...

> The autopsy shows that Schoenig died from asphyxiation

Something doesn't add up. When you pass out from holding your breath, you automatically start breathing again. What must have happened is there was so much nitrous being used, and not enough ventilation, and the nitrous displaced the air on the floor. So he passed out, fell down, and when he would have started breathing again normally, there was no air on the floor to breathe. No one thought to open a door to let the nitrous escape, so the CPR was in vain if there was no air to get into his lungs. Then his friends cleaned up all the empty whippets before the police arrived, and got their story straight: "he did one whippet, and just died," when there was probably hundreds of whippets being released in an enclosed space, pushing the air off the floor and creating a zone of asphyxiation.

So I suspect this is precisely what I described in my post, asphyxiation from displaced air on the floor. The nitrous itself did not hurt him, it just made him pass out because there was no oxygen in his lungs when he was holding in the nitrous. What killed him was asphyxiation, not toxicity to nitrous.

Decades ago, 2 kids died this way in a pickup truck. They even had the windows open, but the nitrous displaced the air along the floor, they passed out and folded over, with heads below the door-windows, and asphyxiated. More recently but still years ago, a high school boy and girl died together the same way crawling under a large advertising helium balloon to hear their voices sound funny... but there was no air under there, so they asphyxiated. The helium itself did not kill them, it is inert. The lack of air causes asphyxiation, and that is what it is fatal.

So, again, nitrous itself will not hurt you, has never hurt anyone ever, but because it is heavier than air, it displaces the air, and in an enclosed space it will push out all the air, and death by asphyxiation occurs.

The term is Inert Gas Asphyxiation, pretty much as you described. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation -- Approved by Exit International as a reasonably high quality method of permanently checking out

See also the 3.19.1981 Columbia incident: https://www.wired.com/2009/03/march-19-1981-shuttle-columbia...

Edit: to clarify that I'm not disagreeing with anything you've written nor am I attempting pedantry. Just adding a bit.

Thanks for the links and the nomenclature.

Not a bad way to go, but it's always so sad because these kinds of fatalities always seem to have been avoidable.

There's a lake with a history of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos#1986_disaster

Apparently, it was known (or believed) by the locals to house an evil spirit.

Yep, but "doing whippets is dangerous" is the big takeaway.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but this seems like a strange move for a state that just legalized cannabis.

And that's so fucking wrong that it's dangerous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide#Neurotoxicity_an...

NO2 interferes with the bodies ability to absorb vitamin b12. Sustained abuse of No2 even if only several times a week can cause enough of a disruption to b12 absorption that paralysis and other issues affecting motor coordination and locomotion can occurr. It is not the side effect free drug people make it out to be.

H20 can also be lethal if ingested in large enough quantities. So I understand your position on the inherent silliness of the policy response. But it is harmful and statements like these minimize the risks posed by NO2.

The war against drugs is just working great.

It really is, for the drugs.

I like to call it "The War On Americans (who use drugs.)"

Maybe I'm just old and grouchy, but I think that at some point we might need to consider just stepping back and letting a little bit of natural selection occur- occasionally, just once in a while- in Homo (sometimes-not-so-)sapiens.

> Some 1 in 5 young people uses inhalants by the time they reach eighth grade

Well, good thing they now got it under control by fighting the symptoms. I'm sure the kids are not creative enough to find alternatives /s

I think you can still buy whippets in the Village head shops.

Or ebay

They’re definitely sold. Does this new legislation change things? Idk

Weed is openly sold in bodegas and smoke shops in the village too, but none of them are licensed

Nitrous seems like about the best drug a kid could use. Basically no risks, fast acting fast eliminated, non addictive, no evidence of any long term negative effects.

Compare that to basically anything else you can inhale (or swallow or snort or inject).

A classmate of mine went unconscious, fell forward, and smashed their head through a glass coffee table, so I wouldn’t say “no risk.” Yeah it’s “technically not the nitrous but gravity!!!”, but that would be pedantic.

Apart from asphyxiation/kinetic risks and cold burns from crackers (none of which are really high risk IMHO), there's also methionine synthase inactivation. The last one is what the kids need to be told about.

It's unfortunately so nearly completely harmless that it catches many people by surprise that chronic use (like, daily for months for most healthy people but maybe sooner if you're low on B12) will eventually cause nerve damage.

Recommended absolute minimum 2 week interval between "sessions" for long-term use.

Seriously?

> Nitrous oxide is neurotoxic and long-term or habitual use can cause severe neurological damage.

Even wikipedia knows you're wrong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com