Belgium's Laughing Gas Problem Is No Joke: Nitrous Oxide Fuels Nightlife, Crime and Waste Management Crisis

BRUSSELS — Two years after Belgium banned recreational use of nitrous oxide, the gas remains one of the country's most visible drugs, its brightly branded canisters littering parks, nightclub entrances and residential streets even as the substance has become entangled with organized crime networks and a costly waste-management crisis.

Near Brussels-North railway station, discarded nitrous oxide cylinders, black canisters marketed with flashy branding, lie scattered beneath rubbish bins, a sight so common that refuse collectors barely react to it anymore. The canisters have become a persistent feature of the urban landscape, abandoned in parks, piled beside roads and dumped in residential streets across the capital.

Beyond the litter, the canisters pose a direct financial threat to waste infrastructure. When crushed during processing, the pressurized cylinders can explode violently, damaging machinery and forcing incinerators to shut down. "Each explosion costs around a quarter of a million euros," said Nathalie Debast of the Flemish Association of Cities and Municipalities. The organization estimated the total damage bill reached 12 million euros in 2025 alone.

Deborah Apelmaen, commissioner of the Brussels-Midi police zone, has watched the drug's popularity spread steadily through the capital's nightlife over recent years. "Nitrous oxide has been popular for several years as a cheap party drug," Apelmaen said. "You see it in nightclubs, at festivals, at raves. Anyone arriving with cylinders immediately becomes popular." The coronavirus pandemic accelerated the trend, according to the report, as young people gathered in parks, warehouses and private parties while bars and clubs remained closed, an environment well suited to a drug that is cheap, portable and easy to share.

Unlike many other illicit substances, nitrous oxide has been marketed with the aesthetics of celebration rather than danger, packaged in bright colors with sweet flavors and playful branding, and promoted heavily online. "There's a lot of marketing through Snapchat and TikTok," Apelmaen said. "The packaging is attractive, which makes it appear harmless."

Apelmaen was direct about the actual risks involved. "It's extremely dangerous," she said. "For 10 to 30 seconds, users lose touch with reality completely. Someone driving through the city in that condition no longer sees other road users."

Belgium officially banned the recreational use, sale and possession of nitrous oxide two years ago, exempting medical, technical and food-industry purposes. Police welcomed the legal change. "The ban gives us more room to act," Apelmaen said. "We can issue fines of up to 500 euros per cylinder in Brussels and refer cases to prosecutors."

The ban has nonetheless produced unintended consequences, with the trade increasingly shifting into organized criminal networks rather than disappearing. Federal police dismantled a gang distributing nitrous oxide across Belgium earlier this year, seizing more than 7,000 cylinders in the operation. "Nitrous oxide is now circulating through the same channels as other drugs," Apelmaen acknowledged. "You see professionalisation, organised delivery systems and much larger cylinders designed for group use."

The drug's accessibility and brief, intense high have contributed to its spread. A single cylinder costing around 50 euros can entertain a group for an evening, with the high typically lasting less than a minute but intense enough to encourage repeated use. One recovering user, identified only as Frederick, described how casually he first encountered the drug at age 19. "I went to illegal parties where it was offered to me," he said. "It looked innocent. You didn't have to search for it." He described the initial appeal candidly. "You're completely high for a moment," he recalled. "Sounds echo. You see double." That experience did not remain harmless for him. "I became addicted," he said. "Nitrous oxide destroyed my brain cells. I could no longer function properly physically." His addiction eventually spiraled alongside other substance use and led to several years in psychiatric care. "I had completely lost control," he said. "When people hear the word addiction, they think of heroin or cocaine. Not laughing gas."

Fred Laudens of the Flemish Expertise Centre for Alcohol and Other Drugs explained the specific nature of the drug's addictive potential. "It seems harmless, but it isn't," Laudens said. "It's not physically addictive in the traditional sense, but psychologically it can become very addictive because people constantly want to repeat the feeling." Heavy, sustained use has been linked to nerve damage, vitamin B12 deficiency and, in extreme cases, paralysis, while inhaling directly from pressurized cylinders can cause severe frostbite injuries due to the gas's extremely low temperature.

Survey data on usage rates has clashed with the drug's visible presence in cities. Fewer than one in 50 Flemish secondary school pupils reported using nitrous oxide in a 2024 survey, with similarly low figures from university surveys across Flanders and Brussels. Laudens said those numbers likely understate the true scope of the problem. "A relatively small group can still create a huge amount of nuisance," he said, adding that surveys often miss vulnerable populations, including homeless people and marginalized users in large cities. Separately, Belgium's road safety institute, VIAS, found in a 2023 survey that 7% of motorists admitted to driving under the influence of nitrous oxide within the previous year.

Waste figures suggest the ban has done little to curb overall circulation of the gas. According to Interafval, the Flemish umbrella organization for waste-management bodies, the number of cylinders collected at recycling centers rose 35% in 2025 compared with the previous year, with more than 3,200 explosions recorded in incinerators over the same period. Sint-Truiden Mayor Ludwig Vandenhove described a worsening local picture, with dozens of cylinders now collected weekly in his municipality alone. "We only see the problem growing," Vandenhove said. "The ban apparently doesn't solve much."

Interior Minister Bernard Quintin pushed back against characterizations of the legislation as an outright failure. "At least police forces now have a clear legal framework to intervene systematically," he said. Municipal authorities are nonetheless pressing for additional measures, including stricter controls on online sales, expanded prevention campaigns and greater support for waste processors managing the ongoing risk of explosions. The federal government has asked Belgium's National Drug Commission to prepare a new action plan.

The European Union is moving toward tighter restrictions as well, with plans to ban larger nitrous oxide cartridges entirely starting in 2027, permitting only tiny containers under 24 milliliters too small for recreational use.

Some Belgian cities have experimented with more pragmatic responses in the meantime. Ghent introduced a scheme last year offering residents 5 euros for every nitrous oxide cylinder handed in through the city's waste system, with proceeds credited to municipal waste accounts. Louise Blondé of waste company Ivago addressed early concerns that the incentive might inadvertently encourage use. "That concern existed," Blondé said, "but most cylinders are handed in by volunteers cleaning the streets, not by users." Ghent's waste incinerator has not suffered a major shutdown from nitrous oxide explosions since the program began, according to the report, even as smaller blasts continue to occur.

With criminalization failing to eliminate the drug's presence and its colorful, flavored packaging continuing to obscure its genuine risks, from nerve damage and psychiatric harm to dangerous driving and organized criminal distribution, Belgian authorities appear likely to continue weighing additional enforcement, prevention and waste-management measures as the canisters keep accumulating on city streets.