More young women dying of inhalant abuse in UK
More young women in the United Kingdom are dying from inhalant drug abuse, chasing a "legal high" that is quick and dirty.
Candy-Marie Ward, 29, died of cardiac arrest induced by inhalation of a volatile substance: butane, a common lighter fluid.
The abuse of "volatile substances" such as gases, glues, and aerosols has remained fairly steady since the late 1980s in the United Kingdom, killing some 40 people every year. However, the trend has shifted away from teenage boys in recent years as more young women try inhalants and become addicted.
The non-profit group Re-Solv, whose mission is to spread awareness of volatile substance abuse, released a
this month detailing mortalities from volatile substance abuse from 1983 to 2007.
Among key findings, 82 percent of women abusing such inhalants were single, divorced, or widowed. And among married people who died from inhalant abuse, a higher proportion were women, at 27 percent versus 16 percent for men.
"It would appear that [volatile substance abuse] deaths are still far more common in males than females, that currently gas fuels are associated with the majority of deaths, that the age of death is on the increase but that the total numbers of deaths associated with volatile substance abuse have declined since 1992," the report authors wrote.
"Nevertheless there are some routinely collected data that have not thus far been fully exploited within our reports including time of death, day of death, whether 'sniffing' alone or with others ..and marital status."