The Depressing Story of Laughing Gas in the age of drug prohibition
how the media pillories the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 19, 2026
There is nothing more depressing than looking at the media coverage of laughing gas over the last few years. In 2023, I saw "presenters" on Channel 5 in England acting as cheerleaders for outlawing the gas in the United Kingdom.1 Not being satisfied with the nuanced discussion of their two pundits on the subject, these presenters goaded them on from the wings, in an obvious attempt to get them to denounce laughing gas more explicitly on air, telling them in effect: "How can we NOT outlaw laughing gas when we think of our poor children!" These presenters had apparently never heard of William James or of the concept of a free academia -- to say nothing of the rights of the depressed to godsend substances. (They had also never been told that the role of the presenter was to present, not to advocate!)
Nor was the completely uninformed hysteria limited to England. In September 2024, singer Sza assumed the role of Chicken Little for the States by pontificating as follows on X:
“Sorry to be old n annoying but … Is no one gonna talk about how Galaxy Gas came out of nowhere and is being MASS marketed to black children? The government is doing NOTHING? Since when are we selling whip its at the store? Somebody protect the children.” 2
Aah! I run for a copy of the Bill of Rights whenever I hear someone shout "Protect the children!"
Of course, in a sane world, that tweet would not disturb me at all. I would say to myself: "Yes, indeed, let's make access to laughing gas available to adults only, in the same way that we now limit the purchase of alcohol to adults. Yes, indeed, let's protect our children!"
I know, however, that this is not the takeaway message that the vast majority of readers in the west will glean from Sza's remarks. We live in the age of drug-war propaganda, after all, when most readers are completely unaware of any positive uses for drugs (or any downsides of drug prohibition), having been shielded from such inconvenient truths since childhood by media censorship. Indeed, the Smithsonian Magazine article in which I read about Sza's remarks never once mentioned William James, never mind the fact that the use of laughing gas changed his whole philosophy of the nature of consciousness and reality. But the media simply will not publish stories about the beneficial use of substances that they consider to be "drugs," in the negative acceptation of that word. And so I know that to the vast majority of Sza's followers, her post will read as a clarion call for the immediate outlawing of nitrous oxide -- no ifs, ands, or buts about it!
If anyone doubts that readers would draw these conclusions from Sza's remarks, consider the fact that Britain outlawed laughing gas (for everybody) in November 2023, just months after those presenters were bullying their guests into demonizing the substance. Hysteria has consequences in a democracy, especially one in which the most basic of rights are ignored (like the freedom of academia, the right to heal, etc.) in the name of expediency, a world in which tough cases are allowed to make law, despite the well-known (indeed proverbial) shortcomings of that legislative algorithm. It was already illegal to use laughing gas for its "psychoactive effects" in Britain. Such use has been illegal in the UK since 2016 and the passage of the Psychoactive Substances Act. The MPs who passed the act had apparently never heard of William James -- and/or had never heard of academic freedom.
We can only assume that Sza herself feels this way as well. She too demands the immediate outlawing of laughing gas, for everybody. If she thought otherwise, I am sure we all would have heard about it, since the media loves a good "man bites dog" story, a story for which the take-home message is completely opposite to what a reader was expecting. And so when she says, "Somebody protect the children!", she is clearly saying, "Let's outlaw laughing gas for everybody!" Why not?", she seems to ask, "since the gas is dangerous for our kids and has no positive uses whatsoever?"
Does she not realize that this is exactly what white parents in California were shouting at Jimmy Carter in the 1970s about marijuana: "Somebody protect our children"? And so Carter and his successors in the Oval Office made marijuana illegal for everybody, and what was the result? As Colleen Cowles reports in "War on Us":
"There are more black Americans locked in US prisons or on probation or parole today than were slaves in 1850, before the US Civil War."3
Why? Because they were selling strongly desired substances like laughing gas, the laughing gas that Sza now wants to outlaw in the name of saving black lives.
By the way, I find it difficult to write on this topic because the online resources that I encounter during the research process infuriate me so! They are always written by scientists whom we are told are "experts" in the field, even though the only thing that they can tell us about any drug are the risks of using it in the abstract, outside of all context. As scientists, they have no qualifications whatsoever -- nor any apparent interest -- when it comes to evaluating the philosophical, spiritual, and/or psychological reasons for which the use of substances like laughing gas can make perfect sense for a given individual in a given circumstance.
Take the May 2025 piece by Andrew Yockey in The Conversation entitled: ""Nitrous oxide recreational use is linked to brain damage and sudden death − but ‘laughing gas’ is still sold all over the US."4 This is pure yellow journalism in the services of the Drug War ideology of drug demonization. Laughing gas is extraordinarily safe when used intermittently. To say that N20 causes brain damage is like saying that aspirin causes death. In fact, it's worse than saying that aspirin causes death because aspirin kills 3,000 in the UK every year.5 If one was trying to get brain damage with laughing gas, they could surely do so, but to imply that this is a threat to a typical adult user is absurd and qualifies Yockey's entire article for the opprobrious epithet of "hatchet job." That's a term that is frequently overused in the activist game, but Yockey's use of this five-alarm headline let's me employ the term with a clear conscience.
Articles like these compel me, will-I nil-I, to stop what I'm doing every 30 minutes or so and write a protest letter to the authors and publishers in question. I simply cannot let their philosophical shallowness go unchallenged -- though I know in my heart that they are merely espousing the jaundiced views about drugs that everyone expects of them, given the fact that all westerners have been subject to drug propaganda since childhood. And in a way, I should thank these experts for scraping their fingernails so loudly across the chalkboard of my mind. I would ordinarily consider a rebuttal on my part to be pointless, given my long-term experience of being gaslighted by the many votaries of the cult of drug prohibition. So when they pluck my last nerve with their craven kowtowing to Drug War orthodoxy, they are actually doing me a favor. They are motivating me to write blistering prose -- albeit at a time when I should, by rights, be attending to other business, like the completion of this essay about laughing gas.
Speaking of which, suppose I were to end the latter with the help of the former? Suppose I were to conclude this essay by publishing one of the protest letters that I wrote during its composition? Suppose further that the aforesaid essay was addressed to the editors of The Conversation and that it contained an impassioned critique of the above-mentioned article by Andrew Yockey? Suppose that I published THAT, eh?
I am tempted to also say: "Suppose that the letter below persuaded those editors that I myself should be allowed to publish my own article on The Conversation platform about the true value of substances like laughing gas..." Wouldn't that be something? But then I might as well ask the reader to suppose that Santa Claus exists. My letters on these topics have always been ignored by the mainstream, including Rolling Stone6, the Atlantic7 and the New York Times8. Besides, does anyone really believe that The Conversation website is actually about having conversations? No. It is rather a place where scientists can pretend to be experts on things that they know nothing about and thereby keep the discussion of otherwise obvious drug benefits off the minds of the mere drug user.
Letter to The Conversation
With respect, your articles about laughing gas are extremely biased, especially the alarmist piece by Andrew Yockey in May 2025 that was misleadingly entitled:
"Nitrous oxide recreational use is linked to brain damage and sudden death − but ‘laughing gas’ is still sold all over the US"
I have written over a dozen essays on this topic. I am also the only philosopher who has protested in the name of academic freedom against the FDA's plans to "schedule" laughing gas as a "drug." To do so would be nothing less than the censorship of academia. The use of laughing gas changed James' philosophy of consciousness. As he wrote in "The Varieties of Religious Experience" regarding his use of the gas:
"One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different."9
James encouraged the philosophical use of the drug. Yet your May 2025 article on the subject NEVER EVEN MENTIONED WILLIAM JAMES!!! Your authors on the subject find nothing but potential health problems from overuse. But then this censorship is typical. The online biography of William James at his alma mater, Harvard University, does not even mention James' use of laughing gas, even though use of the substance changed his entire philosophy of consciousness and of reality itself.10
If Andrew treated alcohol like that, he would be demanding a return to prohibition. He could also have a field day with aspirin, given that it is responsible for 3,000 deaths a year in the UK alone!11 He could create a great scare headline with that one! "Aspirin Kills! But it is still sold all over the US!"
You brag about having "experts" as authors on the Conversation website -- but scientists are NOT the experts when it comes to psychoactive substances. William James is the expert. The Vedic people were the experts when they found that Soma inspired a new religion. Uses are the experts. The most that scientists can do is tell us of abstract risks of drug use. That's it. All your "experts" see in the use of such substances is the effect on brain chemistry. The "experts" are like Dr. Spock of Star Trek: they just don't get it. The benefits of drug use are in the effects as perceived by the user. But this scientific bias is to be expected since government institutions like NIDA give grants only to those who are seeking to find problems with drug use.
That's why they're not called the National Institute on Drug Use but rather the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Their job is to demonize drugs. Their bylaws forbid them to promote drug re-legalization for any outlawed substance. I am a real expert on this subject, however. As a chronic depressive, drug prohibition has denied me the use of godsend substances for a lifetime -- and shunted me off onto Big Pharma meds that are far harder to kick than heroin 12.13 As a philosopher, drug prohibition has blocked me from following up on the philosophical investigations of William James!
If you are open to publishing the other side of the story about laughing gas, thus allowing for a REAL conversation, let me know. Some examples of my essays on the topic may be found below. (What expertise do your scientist authors have on William James? Given the articles they write, they seem to have never even heard of the man.)
I wonder: Will you print the other side to this topic? Or will you ghost me like every other mainstream media outlet in the country? If you want a true conversation on this subject, please let me know.
Brian Quass
abolishthedea.com
PS Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime! When you limit the conversation to scientists, you are silencing the millions of depressed Americans who suffer unnecessarily from drug prohibition, to say nothing of philosophers and those seeking the sort of religious inspiration that the Vedic people found from Soma or that the Peruvian Indians found from the coca leaf.
PPS America should provide laughing gas kits to the suicidal, just as we now provide epi pens to those with severe allergies.
PPPS If you insist that authors only come from the research community, you are only going to print one side of this story. That is NOT a conversation.
Follow-up message to editor Martin LaMonica at The Conversation
I'll leave you guys alone after this. I just wanted to add that Britain outlawed laughing gas in 2023 based on just such one-sided coverage of laughing gas as Andrew provided. As a 67-year-old chronic depressive, I believe that substances like laughing gas are godsends and I should have access to them as part of my right to heal and to take care of my own health. So it is highly irritating when The Conversation publishes a piece designed to instill fear about the gas while ignoring the drug's philosophical use and its obvious potential benefits for the depressed. This irritation is aggravated when I realize that I am not even eligible to write a rebuttal, since you only accept articles from researchers -- researchers who are funded by NIDA, by the way, whose very bylaws forbid it from publishing anything that might promote the legalization of an outlawed substance. This is the problem with putting academics in charge of psychoactive drugs. They are not the experts. They are committed to ignoring common sense drug benefits. Even a child knows that laughing gas could help the depressed -- at least until they are told differently by researchers who are paid to toe the party line about such substances, that they are evil and have no positive uses whatsoever.
If you really want a conversation, you would allow non-researchers to respond to articles of this kind. Otherwise, you are essentially telling the depressed to "shut up and take your meds."
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
The outlawing of coca and opium is a crime against humanity.
I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses.
"You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"
I never said that getting off SSRIs should be done without supervision. If you're on Twitter for medical advice, you're in the wrong place.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
America never ended prohibition. It just redirected prohibition from alcohol to all of alcohol's competitors.
In "Four Good Days" the pompous white-coated doctor ignores the entire formulary of mother nature and instead throws the young heroin user on a cot for 3 days of cold turkey and a shot of Naltrexone: price tag $3,000.
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
Do drug warriors realize that they are responsible for the deaths of young people on America's streets? Look in the mirror, folks. People were not dying en masse from opium overdoses when opiates were legal. It took your prohibition to accomplish that! Stop arresting, start teaching safe use!
Being less than a month away from an election that, in my view, could end American democracy, I don't like to credit Musk for much. But I absolutely love it every time he does or says something that pushes back against the drug-war narrative.
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