Inhalants - Usage Trends

Usage Trends

Much inhalant use occurs during early adolescence, but experimentation may begin before that. In an article for the Washington Post, Shankar Vedantam reported that "children as young as fourth-graders [nine and ten year olds] are deliberately inhaling fumes of dangerous chemicals" to get a quick high. "Unlike the effect of alcohol," continued Vedantam, "these highs disappear within minutes, making it hard for parents to detect the abuse."

Adolescents at Risk

Data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show that more youths age twelve and thirteen used inhalants than marijuana in 2003. The most commonly used inhalants in this age group include glue, shoe polish, toluene (solvent), gasoline, lighter fluid, and spray paint.

Rates of Use Rose in the Early Twenty-first Century

The "2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)," conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), revealed that 9.7 percent of Americans age twelve and over had used inhalants at some time in their lives. That is almost 23 million people. Approximately 718,000 of these people were between the ages of twelve and thirteen, and 2.6 million were seventeen or younger. From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, the number of young females abusing inhalants increased. Long-term abusers, however, are usually male.

In 2004, the annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) study, conducted by the University of Michigan and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, found that 17.3 percent of eighth graders had abused inhalants at least once. The rate in 2003 was lower, at roughly 15.8 percent. Results of the 2004 MTF study also revealed that eighth graders reported higher rates of current abuse than tenth and twelfth graders.

A Global Problem

Solvent abuse has been a worldwide problem for decades. The rates of young abusers are particularly high in poor nations with large populations of homeless children. Glue sniffing is an enormous public health issue in the southeast Asian nations of Cambodia and Singapore; the eastern African nations of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda; and the city of Bombay in eastern India. Street children with no money, food, or shelter sniff glue to ease the feelings of hunger—and sometimes the cold—they experience every day and night. In Singapore alone, the number of reported inhalant abuse cases rose from 24 in 1980 to 1,112 in 1987 before beginning a steep decline. And those are just the cases that were reported to the Central Narcotics Bureau of Singapore. Glue sniffing is widespread in parts of Mexico, Central America, and South America as well. It is not uncommon to see children high on inhalants lying in the streets. Many of them took up the habit when they were under the age of ten.

Inhalant use is also high in other regions. Sniffing gasoline is a serious problem among young Aborigines in Australia's rural desert communities and among the Native American population in Canada. The 1999 "European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs" cited rates of lifetime inhalant use reported by graduating high school students throughout Europe. According to the survey, about one in every seven graduates in the United Kingdom reported using inhalants at some point in time. Rates in Ireland were slightly higher, with one in every five graduates reporting inhalant use.

Older Abusers

Inhalant use tends to be highest among adolescents. Some young people who abuse inhalants, especially when they do it repeatedly over a span of several days, find they have a strong need to keep using them. Early abusers may move from experimentation into regular, long-term use. Some continue to abuse the substances into their fifties and sixties. These users have become dependentWhen a user has a physical or psychological need to take a certain substance in order to function. on the

A homeless boy in Bombay, India, pours gasoline onto a cloth so that he can deliberately inhale the fumes. Inhalant abuse is common among street children who use substances such as gas, paint thinner, and glue. Jonathan Torgovnik/Corbis.
A homeless boy in Bombay, India, pours gasoline onto a cloth so that he can deliberately inhale the fumes. Inhalant abuse is common among street children who use substances such as gas, paint thinner, and glue. © Jonathan Torgovnik/Corbis.

chemical vapors and need treatment to kick their habit. Teens who continue abusing inhalants at later ages develop more severe social and psychological problems than do those who discontinue use after adolescence.