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This story first ran in the Feb. 5, 1980, edition of WW.
In shops all over Portland, rows of amber bottles of butyl nitrite glow like jewels. Crack open the yellow plastic wrapper and take a sniff. In seconds, your blood pressure will drop dramatically, your heartbeat will double its normal speed and you’ll experience an intense “rush.” At five bucks a bottle, it’s a cheap toss for a quick high.
It’s also a pretty cheap way to die. With your 10-minute rush, doctors and researchers say, your $5 might buy you a stroke, heart damage, and a change in your hemogloibin that inhibits its capacity to carry oxygen.
Why, then, is the sale of butyl nitrite perfectly legal?
Sold as it is, “amyl” (one of its street names) falls neatly between the cracks of the federal regulatory system. Because it’s labeled as a “room odorizer” or “liquid incense,” it isn’t a drug. Sellers claim sales to minors are “discouraged.” But the litter of amber bottles at Council Crest suggest that teen-agers can get it, and do. The outlets in Portland are numerous and the opportunity for minors to buy a sniff is there.
Walk into The Store on SW 10th Avenue across from the public library. Immediately inside is a glass case full of Rush bottles—even six packs for those long weekends. A glance will gain you an explanation from a salesperson: catch a whiff of the fumes and you’ll get a quick but powerful rush. Why kid around? No one is scenting their rooms with stuff that smells like a sweaty gym.
The increasing use of butyl nitrite has police and drug authorities concerned. It’s a big industry—$25 million a year in sales with cagey marketing techniques and no legal restraints. From its start as a drug popular with homosexuals, butyl is fast becoming the drug of choice for a broad spectrum of people: straight, homosexual, young, chic.
Until the proper research is done, and as long as the distributors can sidestep the issue with inaccurate labeling, butyl nitrite undoubtedly will continue to increase in popularity and will remain legal, inexpensive, available, and dangerous.
“Just call it an adult product,” chuckled a butyl salesman to a Willamette Week reporter posing as a prospective dealer. “After it gets into the public’s hands, who knows who does what with what?” Butyl nitrite is the first cousin of amyl nitrite, a vasodilator used medically since the 19th century to treat angina patients. When inhaled in therapeutic amounts, these nitrites dilate blocked vessels throughout the body, causing an almost instantaneous drop in blood pressure and easing the pain of an angina attack. The effects are extremely fast and are dissipated as quickly: nitrites are absorbed through the lungs as if they had been injected, and wear off within a few minutes. Even so, doctors dispense them with great care.
“Very little is known about the amyl and butyl end of the molecule, and we’re aware of distinct side effects from nitrites.” says Frank Kloster, head of the Division of Cardiology at the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center. “We always use it with caution.”
Nonetheless, in 1960, the Burroughs Wellcome Co., the largest manufacturer of amyl nitrite for medical purposes, asked the Food and Drug Administration to allow it to sell the drug over the counter. The FDA agreed. Within a short time, sales of the drug soared, largely because of its newfound notoriety with the gay community as an aphrodisiac that prolongs orgasm and relaxes the anal sphincter.
Burroughs Wellcome, a family owned, conservative company, disliked the drug’s new use and feared legal consequences, and 1969 asked the FDA to return amyl to its controlled prescription status, which the agency did.
However, by then amyl’s popularity as a high was well established. Before long, Clifford Hassing, a graduate student in Los Angeles, developed butyl nitrite, a variation that had virtually (he same effects as amyl but worked even faster. Butyl, an industrial chemical used as an ingredient in fuel, dyes, and perfume, didn’t fall under the prescription guidelines set forth for amyl. Within a few years, the recreational nitrite industry was pocketing $25 million a year, and over five million Americans were snorting “room odorizers” to get stoned.
Rush, Jock, Bolt, Bang, Hard Ware, Popper—some of the trade names for butyl nitrite—were originally marketed only in adult book stores and gay discos, and had little exposure outside these circles. But as disco moved into the mainstream, butyl moved with it. Pacific Western Distributing, whose Rush and Bolt account tor about 70 per cent of the market, saw
an opportunity to break the drug out of its gay confine. An aggressive advertising and marketing campaign soon had Rush in record stores, paraphernalia shops and boutiques, supported by advertising in some 30 national publications.
Not surprisingly, the “gay disco drug” quickly became “poor man’s cocaine,” embraced by heterosexual adults and minors. W. Jay Freezer, chief executive officer of Pacific Western, estimates that Rush is sold in 70,000 outlets around the country. “If people want to buy it in Safeway, I’ll sell it in Safeway,” he states. At present, nothing but Safeway could stop him.
“We have concerns about the abuse of nitrites,” says Sue Hutchcroft, consumer affairs officer of Seattle’s FDA office. “We know that young people are using it as a drug, no matter what the label says. But right now, it doesn’t come under the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, so there’s nothing we can do until we find a different way to act on it.”
The Portland Police and Federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials are equally frustrated. “We know Rush is a common thing, seen regularly by all the officers. We know juveniles can get it , " says Sgt. Dan Noelle of the Portland Police Bureau. “Until an official move is made to remove it from the market, there’s nothing we can do.”
Special Agent Rex Holgerson, of the Portland Drug Enforcement district office, echoes that predicament. “Until it’s a controlled substance, the DEA can spend no time with it. We can only enforce existing laws.”
Most research done on the volatile nitrite family is irrelevant to the way the chemicals are used for highs. Studies have examined side effects of amyl used therapeutically: others have examined the effects of butyl nitrite on industrial workers who are continuously exposed to high concentrations.
Many adverse side effects have been clearly indicated without extensive research. Herbert Wendel, professor emeritus in the department of pharmacology at the University of Oregon, cites several concerns, including dimness and fainting; impaired heart function; tolerance, leading to greater abuse; and a change of hemoglobin into methemoglobin, an anemic condition in which the blood is unable to carry oxygen properly. In an overdose, Wendel believes, even death can occur.
“Nitrites should definitely not be sold as an uncontrolled substance,” he states. “They present a public danger.”
Kloster suggests even more possible hazards If a person sniffing butyl nitrite has an undiscovered aortic valve defect or disease, permanent heart damage can result. More grim is that a butyl user with a narrowing of the arteries to the head (a common condition in middle age) might suffer a stroke as a direct effect of the drug. In either case, Kloster points out, the results could be death.
“Until there are studies done specifically researching the use of these chemicals as recreation, I favor not making them available. There are clearly some symptoms that are dangerous,” says Kloster.
There is suspicion among the medical community that abuse of nitrites can lead to liver disease; that it aggravates asthma; that inhaled nitrites produce the same carcinogenic nitrosamines that have been discovered in cured meats. Poured on the skin, nitrites produce a chemical burn—especially dangerous if deep in the nose. Splashed in eyes, they cause temporary blindness. They are more explosive than gasoline. Ingested, they are highly toxic. At the least, many users complain of short lived “nitrite” headaches and prolonged head pain. Psychological and sexual dependence are often found in habitual users.
Puritan or prudent?
Pacific Western’s Freezer is aware but seemingly unruffled by these allegations. He’s had plenty of experience fighting to sell his product. In 1977, a suit in the California Superior Court tried to get Rush off the market, saying it was not really being sold as liquid incense, as labeled, but as an aphrodisiac, and, as such, was potentially toxic. The drawn out litigation ended in 1978 with a temporary injunction against Rush in California. Pacific Western then created Bolt—a slightly different molecular structure, and a different ad campaign—and put it back on the shelves. California officials have since given up the battle.
In 1978 Connecticut used the state’s Child Protection Act to ban Rush when children began using it. Pacific Western sued and won the case. Freezer has an impressive arsenal of doctors and lawyers who have since met and won challenges in Texas, Georgia and Wisconsin. Only Massachusetts has successfully sued to keep butyl nitrites off the shelf
Interested dealers are assured that selling the product is absolutely legal; Pacific Western will provide legal backing for any of its outlets that are “illegally harassed” by regulatory agencies. Whenever a community has attempted to stop the sale of Rush, Pacific Western has intervened and demonstrated the safety of its “liquid incense.”
Freezer urges control of sales to minors, although he claims that no law forces him to do so. “These chemicals are not at all physically toxic to children, even if they are abused,” the company’s executive officer states. “Psychologically, though, there’s no telling. We’d rather not advocate it.”
He complains that much of the public’s backlash is a result of the chemical’s association with gay culture and sex. “It’s just an attitude against hedonism,” he complains. “It’s that puritan attitude that feeling good is bad. Even if there were an aphrodisiac—because that’s not what this is sold as—it wouldn’t be socially acceptable to market it.”
Freezer, who is also chief executive officer of Pharmex, a chemical manufacturing concern, is convinced of the product’s safety, even if it is “abused,” and offers any disbelieving listener a copy of reports his doctors have compiled to that effect “There’s no question that people are inhaling this to get high,” he admits. “But people sniff paint and gasoline to get high. You’re not going to tell a paint dealer that he can’t sell paint any more because people are sniffing it to get high. To control products unnecessarily is just crying wolf. It creates more problems than it solves.’’
Although Freezer claims Rush is a “room odorizer,” its smell has led at least one brand of butyl to be named “Locker Room.” Kloster says he warns his heart patients that the odor will be quite unpleasant “The odor is uniformly disliked,” he explains.
The room odorizer defense may soon meet its match The FDA’s Hutchcroft thinks that since it is dear that people are using it as an inhalant, simply labeling Rush as something else can’t forever promise it immunity from investigation. " The problem,” she says wearily, “is, where do you get witnesses to attest that they are using this as a drug? Then how do you get them to go to court as a witness to prove it to a judge?”
The Portland buzz
Recently, The Store, which caters mainly to a gay clientele, moved its display of Rush bottles to the front of the counter.
“We get a lot of curious people,” says Bruce Watson, store manager. “I suppose that’s because we’re the most brazen, putting the bottles in front of the counter. But if you control it like you’re supposed to. you shouldn’t have any problems.” Although Pacific Western doesn’t suggest it, Watson readily explains how to sniff Rush to get high if an interested customer is curious.
Rush is a good profit item—the bottles wholesale for $1.50 and are marked up as much as 400 per cent—and Watson says it sells very well: “about 10 bottles a day, more on weekends and holidays.” Teen-agers constantly come into the shop and ask about it. “We try to educate them and then tell them they can’t buy it,” Watson explains. “We get an awful lot of curious kids.”
The Metropolis, a gay, underage disco, also sells Rush. Owner Lanny Swerdlow is adamant about allowing the chemical to be vild. “It is entirely up to the individual, and the government shouldn’t get involved,” Swerdlow states flatly. “I don’t care if it kills you. That’s a matter of individual judgment.”
Not all proprietors agree. Steven Amick, owner of Ides of March, a downtown head shop, refuses to carry nitrite products. “Everyone knows they’re unsafe. We don’t want anything to do with products like that.”
Recently, High Times magazine—the bible of the drug culture—decided to ban advertising of butyl nitrites in the magazine as a matter of editorial policy. “We believe in the use of recreational drugs by adults,” says National Marketing Director Sieve Burzon. “We don’t believe in the use of untested, potentially damaging, destructive drugs. The general feeling in the staff is that nitrites are harmful. The fact that Rush is readily available to minors is also contrary to our policies.”
The policy is no mere gesture. High Times estimates a loss in ad revenue of $500,000 per year (The policy also refuses ads for nitrous oxide, drugs aimed specifically at minors, and the chemicals used to cut cocaine.)
Pacific Western can give no accurate tally of the number of Portland Rush outlets because much of the product is marketed through secondary dealers. Freezer guesses there are at least 100 outlets in Oregon.
High high school
Counselors may not know, but nitrates are becoming increasingly common in schools. “Everybody’s tried it,” says John Linn, a junior at Washington Monroe. “You can get it anywhere. Kids would carry it around at school, but none of the teachers were aware of it.”
Linn thinks a lot of people got bored with Rush because it gave them headaches, but that younger students in junior high like it because it’s cheap and they can get it more easily than liquor. “It’s a lot like speed, which is really popular, but the older kids just end up buying speed because it’s so accessible,” he adds. “I don’t really like Rush. It’s too blunt.”
“It’s really easier to get than a drink since it’s legal,” says Mark Tolland, age 16. “You can get any drugs that are illegal, so naturally it’s simple to get Rush.”
Jim Kenney, program manager of Drug Treatment Services at Comprehensive Options for Drug Abuse, is concerned about the ease with which minors are getting hold of nitrites. " I t ' s out there, and kids in the schools have it,” he states. “It’s very easy to obtain. We haven’t seen anyone come in for treatment with nitrites as their primary problem, but a lot of our kids include that as part of their drug use pattern.”
Kenney says CODA has been receiving a fair amount of calls from people wondering if Rush and its counter parts are harmful. “I tell them that if they’re as healthy as a horse they’ll probably be OK. But I think that there ought to be more attention paid to it, since there are medical risks Maybe regulation wouldbhe in order.”
Freezer says he doesn’t want to make a product that is harmful. “Our first concern is that we aren’t producing something that will create injuries. Most of the arguments against these products are being made by people with no knowledge.” He maintains that the press has paid attention to the issue only because it concerns sex and drugs—”great newspaper topics.”
He cites his voluntary refusal to sell to minors as evidence of his concern. “These products enhance sexual pleasure. Naturally, we don’t advocate an 8 year old enjoying a product that will enhance those sorts of feelings. But the products are perfectly safe. In some cases they might even be beneficial.”
Until more research is done, it is un likely that anyone will he able to stop the sale of nitrites in Portland. No move has been made in that direction by any governmental agency. As with most other drugs, interest and regulation will probably lag far behind the spread of usage. In the meantime, suspicion and shreds of damning, conclusive medical evidence will have to serve as the only deterrents.
It’s hard to imagine a federal regulatory system with cracks big enough to let a $25 million a year industry slip through. However, that, quite simply, is the case.
No one really knows if the little amber bottles hold paradise or death. For now, it’s Russian roulette on a $5 bill.