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The San Francisco Police Department have arrested a man on suspicion of possessing and distributing large amounts of nitrous oxide outside of Dead & Company’s massive homecoming shows in Golden Gate Park this past weekend.
Per SF Gate, it wasn’t the only nitrous oxide-related inquest, with SFPD also issuing three citations and booking one person into San Francisco County Jail. The drug, familiarly known as ‘Whippets’ and known by Grateful Dead fans as ‘Ice Cold Fatties,’ has long been associated with the Deadhead community. It appears in the form of colorful, oversized balloons, which SF Gate notes were seen deflated and littered all around Golden Gate Park before and after the Dead & Co show.
The drug was so popular last weekend that SFPD identified a trailer containing 100 metal tanks on Saturday, which they presumed were filled with nitrous oxide. While the drug is not illegal to purchase (nitrous oxide can be used for cooking and other practical reasons) it is illegal to distribute it for recreational use. Its illicit status doesn’t deter everyone though; around the counterculture-centric Haight Street, a reddit user noticed flyers advertising the delivery of 20-pound tanks.
When inhaled, nitrous oxide temporarily cuts off oxygen to the brain, resulting in a brief, intense high. In their heyday, the Grateful Dead were major proponents of the drug; there were tanks present throughout the recording of their 1969 album Aoxomoxoa, with Jerry Garcia attributing nitrous oxide to helping inspire the song “What’s Become of the Baby”: “If you want to make ‘What’s Become of the Baby’ work, I’ll tell you what to do: get a tank of nitrous oxide. All of a sudden it works!,” Garcia said in a 1978 interview. “When we were doing our mixes on that we had a tank. We were all there with hoses. All kinds of weird shit was happening. It was totally mad, total lunacy.”
The drug continued in relevance throughout the ’70s within the counterculture movement, and SF Gate notes that there’s been a resurgence of the drug in the Bay Area of late. Fans exiting and entering the park last weekend could hear dozens of ballon-strapped vendors advertising “Ice Cold Fatties” alongside the usual bacon-wrapped hot dog vendors, and many experienced fans were seen with their own balloons for nitrous oxide consumption (SF Gate notes that often, vendors will pick up used balloons and re-fill them, with one vendor claiming “The same balloon could have been used by 20 people over 13 states”).
While the Dead & Co’s major three-night stand at Golden Gate Park appeared to be a blast, nitrous oxide remains a very dangerous drug; it deprives your brain of oxygen, risking unconsciousness, nerve damage, or even sudden death.
English (US) · 