THE NEXT DRUG EPIDEMIC IS BLUE RASPBERRY FLAVORED

When the Amor brothers started selling tanks of flavored nitrous oxide at their chain of head shops, they didn't realize their brand would become synonymous with the country's burgeoning addiction to gas.

- Ezra Marcus

In early 2023, Alex took a job at Cloud 9, a strip-mall smoke shop off Atlanta's I-85. He had recently graduated from college and wanted something laid-back; the shop, with its graffitied ceilings and cheesy blue-light displays, seemed like the ideal register job for a stoner with a music degree.

It didn't take long for him to realize that many of his customers weren't there for rolling papers or vapes. They were coming instead for Galaxy Gas, the shop's toddler-size, candy-flavored, Day-Glo-colored tanks of nitrous oxide. He didn't know anything about nitrous when he started, but his manager walked him through the basics. "They had to teach me all the legal loopholes you had to jump through, that you had to tell customers that it was for infusing drinks or making whipped creams," he says.

Soon, he understood exactly what nitrous oxide was. How could he not? His customers were buying hundreds of dollars worth of tanks at a time, inhaling as much as they could in the parking lot of the store, then coming back for more, often with strange new limps and tremors. "One guy would come a bunch of times a day, Alex says (employees' names have been changed for privacy). "We'd first see him in the morning; he'd just stuff whatever he could fit in his book bag." Then he'd reappear a few hours later for more, stumbling and slurring his words. But what could Alex do? His card ran. Still, Alex was disturbed. He started telling customers the gas wasn't in stock even when it was. "The fact that I've had to say 'Bro, I think you're good for the day' is insane," he says. "I'm not a bartender. This isn't something where I'm obligated by law to tell you. But just out of my morals, I don't want to be the person that sells this guy this tank and he goes and hits it in his car, then kills somebody."