Trips That Kill

Somewhere, somehow, John H. ("Chip") White Jr., 17, heard that inhaling the fumes from an aerosol can of cocktail-glass chiller was a cheap and safe way to turn on. So Chip, the son of a New York advertising executive, began sniffing the stuff. Last week he bought a fresh supply at a hardware store and took it to his house in Greenwich, Conn. He suggested to his sister, Lucie, 11, that they both try it. It was 8 p.m. While their parents sat downstairs, Chip and Lucie went into a second-floor bedroom. When Lucie inhaled the gas, she immediately choked and lost consciousness. Panicked, Chip screamed for his parents, but it was too late. Said Dr. J. Colman Kelly, Greenwich medical examiner, "She died in about three minutes, asphyxiated."

Three weeks ago, Mike McCuan, a popular 18-year-old Medford, Ore., high school senior, took the same deadly trip. In each case, Freon-12, an odorless, colorless cryogenic gas, may have frozen the victim's larynx, cutting off oxygen to the lungs; in McCuan's death, it also caused massive accumulation of fluids in the lungs.

How widespread is the use of quick-freeze aerosol spray for freaking out? No one really knows--yet. Hippies and college students reportedly have turned to it as a legal turn-on (the labels on the cans read "harmless and non-toxic"). At Yale, a few students have been inhaling the gas since it was introduced last month by collegians returning from the West Coast. In Medford, at least 200 high school students were using it. Literally scared sick by the McCuan tragedy, scores of them fled to family doctors and hospitals, complaining of aches, stabbing chest pains and sleeplessness. Most of the symptoms seemed to be psychosomatic. But doctors warned that sniffers might suffer long-lasting effects, possibly brain-cell damage, from anoxia.

For most of the Medford teenagers, one death was more than enough warning. Still, discontinuance of the practice seems doubtful. An Oregon medical investigator said that stocks of the quick-freeze spray are bought up as quickly as they are put on shelves in Portland. Said one Medford 17-year-old, who has taken advantage of the scarcity to sell the gas at 250 a dose in the past, "I don't think it's all over here. Kids will think Mike McCuan made a mistake. He used it wrong. Tried to get too high. They'll be back using it soon. Even after Mike died, a kid stopped me in the hall and wanted to know if I'd sell him a few whiffs."

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