One of the 1.6 litre canisters of nitrous oxide found by a street cleaner at the Māngere town centre. Photo: Supplied
A street cleaner is still seeing large canisters of nitrous oxide being sold to young people from shops in the Māngere town centre, despite the government's recent crackdown on the sale of the gas for recreational use.
Known as 'NOS' or 'nangs', the canisters can be used to make whipped cream, but people also use them as a recreational drug.
Health Minister Shane Reti said last month that the government was considering urgent options to try and stop people selling and using the substance.
These include penalties of up to two years in jail or a hefty fine, following a Medsafe report highlighting the risks of using it to get high.
In the early hours of the morning, a street cleaner said she saw three young people buying large canisters of nitrous oxide from a 24/7 superette in the Māngere town centre in Auckland.
She said this was the fourth time she had seen this happen in the past few weeks.
"Between 4:30 and 4:45 you know, they usually rock up. When I was tying off the bags from the far end of where their shop was located, I just happened to notice how this young boy [was] lingering, longer than necessary at the shop," she said.
"As I got closer the shop owner quickly gave over three canisters."
The 1.6 litre bottles are able to be purchased from two superettes in the town centre for $151 each.
She said the problem has gotten worse over the past six months and on average 12 cans were littered across the street each night in front of both shops.
She saw more young people lining up outside on Sunday night, so she confronted the shop owner the next morning.
"I've just seen you selling those, he goes: 'Oh, they're you know, catering'," she said.
"I said: 'What do three boys under the age of 20 want to do with catering this hour of the morning?'"
She said she would like to see better regulation of nitrous oxide and shops being stopped from selling it altogether.
The canisters were hidden at the back of the store, but could be easily spotted.
"It's bad because you see all our young tamariki blatantly sitting in the car park or blatantly sitting on the footpath," she said.
The shop owners told her they did not see this behaviour, she said.
"Of course you don't see because you don't want to see."
A worker in a vape shop in Dunedin said they were continuing to sell NOS until supplies run out, despite the government's crackdown.
He said the shop sold flavoured canisters, with similar flavours to popular vapes also sold in the store.
"We have flavoured ones, there's a range of flavours and they aren't really what you would think cream should be flavoured as," he said.
"Cola Ice and Peach Ice are pretty strange flavours to choose."
Workers in the vape store have been told to stick with the old policies around nitrous oxide - the buyers have to sign a form to say they were using the canisters for catering purposes only.
The language buyers use can give them away.
"You can't say things like nangs, laughing gas, NOS, nitrous oxide, balloons, crackers, etc," he said.
A previous worker from the same store said she noticed the decline in regular buyers' mental health, especially those who bought multiple boxes at a time.
Although she believed in a progressive approach to drug harm reduction, she said they needed to be taken off the shelves altogether.
"You could definitely just see a change in people like I noticed it was all the regulars who bought nangs, it was just a pattern of changing behaviour, changing personality. Even just looking like very different," she said.
Blain Collinge - the manager of Red Door Recovery, a drug and alcohol treatment centre in Wellington - said he supported the ban as nitrous oxide was a gateway drug for his personal struggles with addiction.
The centre had seen an increase over the past year in the number of inquiries related to nitrous oxide use.
"I've had a lot of inquiries about 16 and 17 year olds that are using methamphetamine and a part of their story is always nitrous oxide," he said.
"We haven't had a direct inquiry for someone on nitrous because they are addicted and need to come off, but it's always been a starter, it is a gateway."
Know Your Stuff NZ general manager Casey Spearin said the crackdown would not create much change as nitrous oxide was one of the least harmful recreational drugs.
But she said she would like to see greater restrictions around how much people can buy and to ensure the canisters could not be bought by minors.