Thread: Kids are using Dust Off to get high and it's killing them.

I checked with snopes.com just to make sure before I sent this. Yes, unfortunately it is true.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/dustoff.asp


First, I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for it's crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were # 2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs.



I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they won't. I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them.



On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer.



On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.



I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM.



I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. It's just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said so.



Kyle and the 'friend' who showed him were wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. It's a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas. Heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out. That's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. Kyle was right. It can't hurt you. IT KILLS YOU.



The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. IT'S NOT AN OVERDOSE. It's Russian Roulette. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in. If not you die within 2 seconds of finishing "the hit." That's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open. The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe its huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why its more accepted. There is no chemical reaction, no strong odor. It doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle complaine d a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known.



It's easy to say hey, it's my life and I'll do what I want. But it isn't. Others are always affected. This has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed up. One won't talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them.



After Kyle died another story came out. A probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a DARE or PLUS program there. So rather than tell everyone about this "new" way of getting high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house.



We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new and some "professionals" do know about. It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it. April 2nd was one month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can't help but wonder if I died and went to Hell.



This Officer is asking for everyone who receives this email to forward it to everyone in their address book, even Law Enforcement Officers.

I head read this a while back. It is so heartbreaking! You try so hard to protect them. I am always talking to my kids to think before they act and that if they ever find themselves in a situation they are not comfortable with to call me and I will come and get them.

Too bad I had to learn of this due to such as sad incident. I have not heard of anyone dying from it in Miami-Dade County yet but my teenage daughter has told me of people trying it. I will talk to our narcotics unit, community relations people and the school police to inform them of this. This way it can be also used in drug education programs if it is not already.

Thanks for the heads up on this "dusting" and I have a teen and we've heard of the triple "C" over the counter cold prep medicine and how that is abused for thrills. My teen paid with a trip to an ER after a friend of a friend offered her a hefty dose of the stuff.

I usually have one or more cans of dust remover near my computer because I often buy the bulk three pack. Who would have thought such a supposedly harmless product could be so harmful, and can cause death quickly.

It's not only dust off that's dangerous. When I was a teen in the seventies a 10 year old boy in my town died from sniffing Pam cooking spray.

It's sad that our children believe the answer to their problems is in a can. We are a society failing our children.

Dixie

We as a society are failing because it is very difficult to make a decent living. The cost of housing in many cities is way too high. Parent(s) both have to work to make neds meet. I am not talking about keeping up with the Jones but to be able to pay the bills. They are tired and try to do what they can to raise good children. The problem arises in the schools and the kids they associate with. I have personally seen all kinds of things as I have a teenage daughter. There are parents who are never home and don't know their children. Their child gets into trouble at school and the parents are notified. The parents threaten to sue the school so the kid is allowed to bully. In fact that child learned it from the parent(s). Then you have kids whose parents do drugs in front of them and don't care. There are also kids who sell drugs in school for the parents. In many cases the parents make terrible role models but then you also can get the opposite where the parents do everything to keep their child out of trouble but the child or teen won't listen. I know of people who have done everything in their power and the teen got into trouble. They tried to stop them from getting into trouble again but they teen didn't listen. In the end they just tell the court that they will no longer take any responsibility due to the fact that they tried and there is nothing more you can do.
There is also too much materialism out there. The you have to have this and that or else you aren't cool. There is a lot more of that than there was in the 70s.

http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/708/index.htm

There is a lot of information here.

Originally Posted by swatchick

We as a society are failing because it is very difficult to make a decent living. The cost of housing in many cities is way too high. Parent(s) both have to work to make neds meet. I am not talking about keeping up with the Jones but to be able to pay the bills. They are tired and try to do what they can to raise good children. The problem arises in the schools and the kids they associate with. I have personally seen all kinds of things as I have a teenage daughter. There are parents who are never home and don't know their children. Their child gets into trouble at school and the parents are notified. The parents threaten to sue the school so the kid is allowed to bully. In fact that child learned it from the parent(s). Then you have kids whose parents do drugs in front of them and don't care. There are also kids who sell drugs in school for the parents. In many cases the parents make terrible role models but then you also can get the opposite where the parents do everything to keep their child out of trouble but the child or teen won't listen. I know of people who have done everything in their power and the teen got into trouble. They tried to stop them from getting into trouble again but they teen didn't listen. In the end they just tell the court that they will no longer take any responsibility due to the fact that they tried and there is nothing more you can do.
There is also too much materialism out there. The you have to have this and that or else you aren't cool. There is a lot more of that than there was in the 70s.

Swatchick,

You are 100% right on everything and I could not have said it better myself.