Data show that inhalant abuse among children is growing in all parts of the country. Use is highest among whites, followed closely by Hispanics, and is lower among blacks. The problem afflicts children from all socioeconomic backgrounds, and from families with both high and low levels of parental education.
But stereotypes about who abuses inhalants and the stigma associated with the practice have kept many parents from believing that the problem could affect them and blinded them to warning signs, said Slayton, Johnson Bryant's mother.
"Looking back, there was an episode where I went in a playroom and found a surgical glove and thought, 'What is the cleaning service leaving a glove for?' " she said. Her son Johnson was filling the gloves with butane and inhaling from them. "He had a heavy cough. He had bouts of belligerence. The stigma of inhalants is what kept me from being aware."
Harvey Weiss, executive director of the nonprofit National Inhalant Prevention Coalition in Austin, said that increasing the visibility of inhalant abuse could reduce abuse. Such campaigns in the early 1990s in Texas brought abuse rates down, but the prevention programs were eliminated in 1995. "Inhalant rates in Texas went back up again," he said.
"We've seen a significant increase in inhalant use by eighth-graders in this country," agreed Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, at a recent meeting in Washington organized by the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America.
Abuse often starts early. By the fourth grade, about one in 25 children has tried an inhalant; by the sixth grade, the rate is one in 10; by eighth grade, it is nearly one in five, Johnston and other researchers report. Inhalant use among eighth-graders is second only to cigarettes and alcohol in drug use.
Although rates seem to be increasing for both boys and girls, experts are especially worried about the sharp increase among girls. But surveys show that boys are more likely to become heavy users.
No single test can detect all of the inhalants, and experts believe that many deaths linked to abuse go unreported or are listed as accidents. Abuse can lead to cardiac arrest, which some experts call "sudden sniffing syndrome."
"If a young person is breathing from a rag or a bag and they get grossly intoxicated within seconds, they then may pass out, fall forward with their face in the bag or in the rag, and then they are going to continue to breathe these fumes and overdose," said Robert Balster, a scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. "It is like turning on an anesthesia machine in an operating room and then walking away."
Some parents fear that anti-inhalant campaigns might unintentionally suggest the idea, or specific techniques, to children who do not know about them. But ignorance may be the bigger problem, said Weiss and parents whose children had died. It is the parents, not the children, who seem to be in the dark, they said.
