It’s just after midnight on a quiet Melbourne street.
Under the cover of darkness, a group of men congregate behind their parked cars where they’ll spend a few hours socialising over a dangerous act.
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Unsatisfied with the smaller 8g silver bulbs, they whip out large industrial tanks decorated with pictures of Miami palm trees and galaxies.
They take turns inhaling the nitrous oxide gas from inside — a gas legitimately used in medical, food preparation and industrial applications — chasing a cheap, risky high.
When they’re done, they hurl the heavy steel cylinders – some the size of a fire extinguisher – onto the side of the road, undeterred by the evidence left behind for locals to find the next day.
It’s almost like clockwork, according to one Victorian resident, who reported the gathering has happened every midnight “for the past few months”.
This terrifying scene is playing out in parks, reserves and laneways right across the country at rising rates, according to data obtained exclusively by news.com.au.
What was once a brief but risky party high has transformed into a suburban menace, with reports of dumped nangs more than doubling in the last year alone.
Community issue platform Snap Send Solve has received more than 1200 complaints from residents who have come across nitrous oxide canisters in the past 12 months, up from 500 at the same point last year. This compares to just 200 in 2024.
The dirty trend is growing much faster than litter reporting overall, with abandoned nangs accounting for more than four times the share of rubbish reports in 2024.
The title of nang capital of Australia goes to Victoria, with 986 Snap Send Solve complaints issued so far this year alone – a 143 per cent increase from 2025.
Year-on-year reports across New South Wales and Western Australia are also increasing at similar rates, but the total number of complaints made overall this year are dramatically lower at 128 and 66 respectively.
Have you been affected by this crisis? Get in touch – rebecca.borg@news.com.au
While nang use is an alarming problem in itself, Snap Send Solve chief Danny Gorog told news.com.au the data shows the disposal of canisters has become just as much of an issue.
“Two years ago a report about nangs was a rarity. This year residents are logging around five a day, and they’re not describing the little bulbs any more,” he said.
“They’re describing tanks the size of a small fire extinguisher, dumped in parks, outside schools and on the nature strip in front of people’s homes.”
Mr Gorog said the messages that come through in reports made by locals is “anxiety as much as annoyance”.
“People don’t know whether the canisters are empty, whether they could explode, or who’s meant to pick them up. And over and over, they tell us they’re worried kids will find them first,” he said.
Mr Gorog also fears the issue could be much larger than what’s being reported, noting his company’s figures “are conservative”.
“We’ve only counted reports where people actually typed words like ‘nangs’ or ‘nitrous oxide’. Plenty more just say ‘gas canisters’ or let the photo do the talking,” he said.
The clean-up cost
The Snap Send Solve data is on par with what local dangerous goods recycling companies are seeing on the ground.
Melbourne hazardous waste collectors Transnitro is collecting between 100 to 200 nitrous oxide canisters per week, and that’s just in the CBD and some surrounding suburbs within a 5km to 10km radius.
Transnitro founder Ryan Keary told news.com.au the company collected up to 25 tonnes of nitrous oxide canisters last quarter, which he said was a “definite increase”.
“The majority of the cylinders are coming out of the city I believe,” he said.
“There’s usually three different sizes. You got your 1L cylinder which is considered as the smallest size, and then there’s a size in between that, it’s a 3.5L cylinder and then the one above, that’s about a 4.5L cylinder.
“We’ve been around since the start of the issue, so we’ve seen them get bigger and bigger as the years go by.”
About 60 per cent of the canisters Transnitro collect are empty, with the rest either partially used or sometimes full.
These canisters are then decommissioned, before the steel and brass are separated and recycled into scrap metal. But it all comes at a cost.
“Being a collection service, our fees mainly come from the actual transport side of it,” Mr Keary said.
“We don’t provide a place for anyone to come in and actually drop them off to avoid illegal dumping … so price-wise it’s all dependent on size of the cylinder and location.”
It can become an expensive task for well-meaning residents, which is why both Mr Keary and Mr Gorog are calling on local councils to step up.
“From my experience, the councils don’t really want much to do with it,” he said.
“We get a lot of residential inquiries where they’ve either been referred from a council or they’ve just been walking through the streets or the parks and picked them up and are trying to do the right thing and they’re being palmed off to us to dispose of them.”
Meanwhile, Mr Gorog encouraged residents to report any nang sighting to Snap Send Solve so councils could act on them, rather than locals having to fork out money for disposal fees.
“If councils don’t know about them, they can’t fix the problem,” he said.
Regulatory gap in nang sales
Gaps in existing controls have allowed large nitrous oxide canisters manufactured overseas to remain readily accessible in Australia.
They’re then sold in smoke shops, online marketplaces and even through phone apps – with some retailers promoting fast, under-an-hour delivery to cater for customers looking for a “quick-fix”.
One mobile app even has a loyalty card and point system, promising discounts on orders and priority service.
Sam Bramman, the founder of No 2 Nangs, a not-for-profit campaign calling for nitrous oxide retail laws across Australia, said the ease of accessibility and zero oversight enables businesses and smoke shops to purchase bulk quantities from overseas and to sell them without restrictions or age verification.
Mr Bramman, who spent two and a half years recovering from a nang addiction, recalled how he was able to easily purchase the drug from five smoke shops in his NSW suburb.
“They all sold it to me without questioning it and I fell down this really big hole from this addiction I had to nitrous oxide,” he said.
“In Newtown, Sydney – and I’m not even exaggerating – every ninth smoke shop has these nitrous oxide canisters in the front window, where pedestrians can walk by and they’re huge tanks as well.
“Some are as big as fire extinguishers and it’s quite scary that these small bulbs where there’s a limit to how much you can use, have turned into these big tanks with an on and off nozzle.”
He said to make matters worse, some of the tanks are produced in unregulated, foreign factories where industrial machine oils from the manufacturing process can leak directly into the gas cylinders.
“There was a study where machine oils were found in people’s lungs from using these tanks which was quite concerning,” Mr Bramman said.
This ease of access was widely noted in a number of Snap Send Solve reports, with one Victorian resident sharing “it is shocking how easily they can get it”.
“Our young people are losing their lives to nitrous oxide inhalation,” they said.
“Every single day, dozens of empty canisters are left littered all over our local nature strips.”
Another Victorian said: “It seems that nangs just keep appearing in the middle of the night … I fear (for) children as well.”
‘A really big hole’: The deadly toll
The increase in illegal recreational nang use is also reflected in state health department poison data.
The Victorian Poisons Information Centre saw the number of calls it received regarding nang exposure more than double from 2024 to 2025, with 121 inquiries made last year alone.
This is a staggering jump from just 32 cases in 2021, climbing steadily to 60 in 2024 before doubling last year.
Meanwhile in NSW, the state’s Poison Information Centre responded to 280 total exposure cases involving nitrous oxide between 2020 and 2025, with 241 of those cases requiring hospital care.
The majority of cases were adults aged between 20 and 74, however, there were 51 cases of children and teenagers requiring medical attention.
A Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network spokeswoman said “nitrous oxide is safely used by medical staff as an anaesthetic and analgesic”.
“However, misuse through excessive or regular exposure to nitrous oxide can cause serious, irreversible neurological harm,” she said.
Queensland Health also recorded a number of hospital admissions for poisoning by inhaled anaesthetics – which includes nangs – between 2021 and 2025, including 11 cases last year, 25 in 2024 and 13 in 2023.
Patients aged 17 or younger accounted for less than 13 per cent of all admitted care episodes involving inhaled anaesthetics across the five combined calendar years.
A Queensland Health spokesman said while the number of patients admitted for poisoning by inhaled anaesthetics such as nitrous oxide in Queensland was low, the impacts of recreational nitrous oxide use “can be deadly”.
“People who inhale nitrous oxide risk developing hypoxia if they do not get enough oxygen,” he said.
“The long-term health effects of nitrous oxide use include memory loss, depression and psychosis.”
Mr Bramman was admitted to a psychiatric ward in late 2023 after developing drug-induced psychosis from nitrous oxide abuse.
When he was discharged, he said he spent the next year and a half “bed bound” and suffering from a severe lack of motivation and inability to perform basic self-care.
“Nitrous oxide abuse is dangerous. There’s not just the short term effects like passing out or freeze burns or seizures,” he said.
“There is long-term stuff like permanent nerve damage, long-lasting mental health issues, psychosis and paralysis.”
Mr Bramman added the commercial tanks with continuous nozzles are “particularly scary”.
“With these small bulbs, there’s a limit to how much you can use, it’s 8g of gas. But with these large tanks, there’s an on and off nozzle,” he said.
“If someone’s using a large tank and getting high off it, it’s quite possible that they pass out with the nitrous oxide nozzle still on and then there’s a constant flow of nitrous oxide going into your body, which is quite scary.”
Closing the loophole
Mr Bramman’s personal experience and No 2 Nangs campaign has sparked discussions on tightening the regulations around nitrous oxide use, but the 22-year-old says there is still a lot more work to be done.
After a year of intense training, Mr Bramman ran from Sydney to Parliament House earlier this year to educate young Australians that nangs are not a “harmless party drug”.
His awareness campaign prompted the NSW government to announce major reforms, including prohibiting the retail sale of cylinders larger than 10g, banning sales to people under 18, prohibiting same-day delivery and restricting retail sale hours – all which will come into effect on November 5 this year.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is currently consulting on two proposals to further restrict non-therapeutic nitrous oxide under the Poisons Standard, with submissions open until October 12.
This first is to prohibit the supply and use of nitrous oxide for non-therapeutic purposes in amounts great than 10g, while the second is to classify nitrous oxide for non-therapeutic purposes as a controlled drug with exemptions for limited personal possession and supply and use for legitimate industrial, automotive and hospitality purposes.
“The goal for me is for the large nitrous oxide tanks to not to be imported into Australia, so being stopped at the border through customs,” Mr Bramman said.
“This is possible if TGA work with customs and reschedule (change the classification of) nitrous oxide – that would affect every state and territory, which is quite exciting.”
The proposals will be considered through the TGA’s Poisons Standard scheduling process following the current consultation.
If you suspect yourself or someone around you has been poisoned or harmed by nitrous oxide, immediately contact the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26 or call triple-0 for emergency medical assistance.
