Orléans is the latest French city to ban the consumption of nitrous oxide in public spaces and restrict its sale to professionals. With recreational use of "laughing gas" increasing among young people, health experts are sounding the alarm over the risks.
Nitrous oxide is sold in high street catering shops, primarily for use in whipped-cream dispensers – but inhaling the gas has euphoric effects. Users, often young people, fill balloons with the gas – also used in hospitals by anaesthetists – inhale it and then throw the container away.
