Traffickers risk going from laughter to tears.

Fifteen tons of nitrous oxide, known as "laughing gas", have just been seized in the Paris region.

This #belleaffair, according to a tweet from the prefect of Hauts-de-Seine, is even a record seizure.

Fifteen tons is also the equivalent of what had been seized in 9 months, between June 2021 and March 2022, by the police in France.

A gas sold on Snapchat

It was during a refusal to comply on the part of a scooter driver in Châtillon in the Hauts-de-Seine on August 7 that the police began the investigation and traced the trail of a vast traffic, indicated the parquet floor of Nanterre.

In the scooter finally intercepted, six bottles of nitrous oxide are discovered, according to BFMTV Ile-de-France.

The driver recognizes in front of the investigators to be delivering laughing gas, sold via the social network Snapchat and locates the place where he gets supplies, in Seine-et-Marne.

In this box, in Collégien, the police discovered more than 800 nitrous oxide cylinders, or 2.2 tonnes of “proto”.

They noticed a few days later “a Dutch delivery driver who came to deliver 14 pallets of nitrous oxide cylinders representing 12 tonnes”.

The investigation, entrusted to the judicial police of Hauts-de-Seine, aims to "identify the organizers of this large-scale traffic", continued the prosecution.

Health risks

Nitrous oxide is normally used in whipped cream dispensers, therefore over the counter, and in medicine as an analgesic.

But it is also popular with partygoers and young people, who have diverted its use for its euphoric effect.

Its sale has since been restricted.

“Laughing gas trafficking took off in the Paris region during 2019 and has continued to flourish since, favored by the penalties much lower than those punishing drug trafficking,” explained the Nanterre prosecution.

“We have gone from marginal use to organized trafficking,” summed up William Hippert, deputy spokesperson for the judicial police, last March.

With a one-liter bottle of nitrous oxide purchased for 25 euros, it is possible to manufacture 400 balloons sold at the price of 5 to 10 euros each, he had calculated.

"Considering the serious health hazards that (it) represents", the Nanterre public prosecutor's office "chosen to pursue the trafficking of this gas as the trafficking of poisonous substances as provided for in the public health code ( 5 years of imprisonment incurred).

The consumption of "proto" indeed presents risks such as asphyxia, loss of consciousness, burns but also, in the event of repeated use and/or in high doses, severe neurological, hematological, psychiatric and cardiac disorders, according to the Interministerial Mission for the Fight against Drugs and Addictive Behaviours.

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