Young lockdown ravers aren't as stupid as you think — they're safer in large numbers

As reports have emerged of some people hosting lockdown parties in rental properties, it provides further evidence of how young people think they are immune from coronavirus.

Although platforms like Airbnb have restricted the way bookings can be made, this has not stopped people posing as keyworkers or claiming they need to be near a hospital for treatment. Often booked for one night, the host may be unaware of the 20 to 30 people partying until they’ve received complaints from neighbours about noise, mess or drugs.

Although most renters will genuinely not want this type of activity, there will be others who are happy to turn a blind eye and be grateful for the scarce revenue at this time. Despite happening under the radar it’s easy to see how this has happened as many young people have been furloughed and so have money to spend, and they are anxious about their future employment prospects. Combine this with what they perceive as the low risk of contracting Covid-19 and you can understand their desire to blow off steam.

But although their risk of contracting Covid-19 may be lower than other groups, they can still carry and transmit the virus when they return home. That is probably the greatest risk in holding these lockdown parties, rather than the drug use. Solitary drug use is always riskier as there is no one to intervene or call for help when things go wrong. Using drugs in a group provides some protection.

The caveat here is the type of drugs used, as obviously some drugs are riskier than others, in part dependent on the route and way drugs are taken. Ingesting drugs orally tends to provide a greater window to prevent overdose than intravenous use. But these lockdown parties aren’t about groups of young people getting together to inject heroin: if anything, they seem to be using one of the safest drugs they could, nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas. The clue is in the name: the effects of nitrous are all the better when shared in company. In that sense nitrous, like ecstasy, is known as the party drug as it enhances cohesion and the sense of a shared experience, as well as a temporary respite from stress and anxiety.

Despite the recent media hype about its health dangers, the main problem with laughing gas is the litter from the canisters discarded on the streets or at parties. The handful of fatalities in recent years associated with laughing gas have been a result of asphyxiation due to a poor technique of inhalation. Some people will have used plastic bags, which results in a dose of nitrous oxide but not enough oxygen, so in effect they suffocate.

These lockdown parties and the laughing gas used in them is the perfect example of how our approach to drug policy is redundant. The parallel is road safety. We don’t tell young people to not cross the road – instead we advise them to look both ways, and invest in safety infrastructure such as pedestrian crossings. Our current drug policy doesn’t adopt the same harm reduction approach, despite knowing that young people have and will always use drugs.

So, it’s left to charities like Crew to offer advice on how to use laughing gas safely and how to avoid suffocating. They also advise against sharing the balloons often used to inhale the gas as it could spread the virus. Welcome as this advice is, it will only reach a fraction of the audience it needs to.

This isn’t complicated: harm reduction interventions, as the name suggests, save lives, while stubborn political ideology prematurely ends them. We can carry on blaming young people who perceive themselves to be immortal, or we can expect our government to protect them. Our young people’s health and safety shouldn’t be a laughing matter.

Ian Hamilton is an associate professor of addiction at the University of York