When Harvey Weiss says that the War on Drugs' focus on illicit substances like marijuana and methamphetamine "sucks up all the oxygen" in policy debates -- leaving little attention for inhalant misuse -- he does so without apparent irony. But as the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition (NIPC) marks its 15th anniversary, the issue of inhalants still has problems getting traction among lawmakers or funding for expanded prevention activities.

Weiss, the NIPC's founder and director, was in Washington, D.C., this week to launch National Inhalants & Poisons Awareness Week and press policymakers and parents to do more about inhalant use. "In Tennessee, all we hear about is methamphetamine, but three times the number of kids use inhalants as meth," according to Weiss, who adds, "Sometimes I get jealous: I wish there was something 'sexy' about inhalants."

Weiss contends that, among national anti-drug priorities, inhalants "should rank #1, because there are lots of indicators that inhalants are the first substance young people experiment with." A new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) says that 1.1 million American adolescents used inhalants in the past year, with use among young girls rising even as it appears to be declining among boys.

As National Inhalants & Poisons Awareness Week (March 16-24) got underway, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) also unveiled a new public-service announcement focused on inhalant use. "Today's young teens didn't benefit from the public-education campaigns and community outreach of the 1990s," noted Steve Pasierb, president and CEO of PDFA. "This new generation of parents needs our help to prevent this dangerous behavior."

Bigger Than Texas

That inhalants remain part of the public discussion at all is largely due to the tireless efforts of Weiss over the past decade and a half. Founded in 1992 as a project of the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse -- and in response to surveys showing that one-third of Texas students were huffing inhalants to get high -- the NIPC launched an awareness campaign that was credited with reducing inhalant use by half among Texas elementary-school students and by 40 percent among high-school students.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation helped NIPC expand its efforts beyond Texas' borders in the mid-1990s, but the group was staggered in 1995 when then Texas Gov. George Bush eliminated all state funding for the program. Fortunately, the NIPC's increased national focus brought the group to the attention of federal agencies like the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, all of which have provided support for the group over the years.

The NIPC also gets grants from Falcon Safety Products, manufacturer of the computer cleaner Dust-Off, and Unilever, which makes Axe body sprays -- both of which have a history of being abused as inhalants.

A series of public-service announcements by PDFA released in 1995 helped raise initial public awareness about inhalant use. Still, says Weiss, the basic challenges that confronted NIPC at its founding remain today. "Parents know about inhalants, but they never think it's something their children would do," he says. The public only pays attention to inhalants when a child dies or when prevalence rates increase dramatically, Weiss says. "The action happens on the local level, not the national level," he notes.

A Breed Apart

As the title of National Inhalants & Poison Awareness Week hints, inhalant abuse stands somewhat apart from other addiction issues. A few thousand organizations participate in NIPC activities and receive its prevention materials, but these are as likely to be poison-control centers as community anti-drug coalitions. Weiss says that working with the medical community and poison experts has helped legitimize concerns about inhalants; materials for young adolescents also stress that inhalants are poisons rather than framing huffing as a form of drug abuse.

On the other hand, inhalant users can become both psychologically and physiologically dependent just like other drug addicts, and heavy users often require six weeks or more to detoxify, says Weiss. Some addiction-treatment programs are equipped to treat inhalant abuse -- NIPC has developed a set of treatment guidelines that are distributed nationally -- but there are just a handful of programs designed specifically to treat inhalant users.

The shortage of addiction treatment programs tailored to the needs of adolescents compounds the problem of treatment access for inhalant abuse, since many users begin experimenting as teens or younger. The involvement of unions and occupational health nurses shows that inhalant abuse is also a problem for adults, especially those working in industries where solvents and gases like nitrous oxide are readily available. But adult inhalant abuse gets scant attention from either prevention or treatment programs.

While he laments the lack of funding and attention paid to inhalants, Weiss says he remains "very optimistic" about NIPC's future. Public-education efforts by NIDA and the HBO "Addiction" series, which promote the idea of addiction as a "brain disease," dovetail well with NIPC messages about inhalants' effects on the brain. Campaigns are underway to warn kids against sniffing correction fluid and discourage the use of the innocuous-sounding term "canned air" to describe computer cleaners that contain huffable propellants. And history has shown that "we can make a difference with our approach," says Weiss.

List of Inhalant Abuse Resources