'Nang' addiction campaigner urges tougher Queensland laws as NSW moves to restrict sales

Sam Bramman says the high from his first "nang" at a party was a fleeting 30-second rush, but in the days after that party it was all he could think about. "Then one packet wasn't enough," he says. "It really quickly spiralled." He was soon using up to 50 canisters a day, and six months after his first hit he went into psychosis. "When I was in my psychosis, I was completely out of touch with reality," he says. "I drove up from Sydney to the Gold Coast by myself and was walking around the Surfers Paradise area screaming, incoherent. Thankfully, my parents found me and took me to a hospital."

Nitrous oxide is commonly used in medical settings to manage pain and in commercial kitchens for cooking. It has long been associated with recreational use, but products are now more readily available through delivery services and retailers such as tobacconists.

Bramman has used his experience to launch a national campaign, No2Nangs, lobbying for tougher laws. He wants Queensland legislation to target large tank canisters and online delivery services, which he says operate legally through loopholes claiming the products are for hospitality use. "They're operating legally through loopholes saying that they're delivering products for hospitality use … but they're really targeted to people who use it recreationally," he says.

NSW will this week introduce regulations banning the sale of nitrous oxide products to under-18s and restricting same-day delivery. The ACT and Tasmania are said to be considering similar measures, and Bramman hopes Queensland will be next. He points to one delivery service that claims 360,000 orders in Queensland since 2018, with products available 24/7 and promised in under an hour.

Labor MP Joe Kelly, who has said nang use is causing damage to people in his Brisbane electorate, launched a petition in June calling for 24/7 distributors to be banned and for sales to be limited to registered commercial operators or licensed buyers. "There's a real problem with this in our community," he says. "All of the families that I've engaged with all point to that 24/7 delivery and say it's why it's so hard to beat this addiction, because you just have instant access almost to this stuff." He said people in the hospitality industry would not use the volumes of gas being sold to whip cream, and doctors and dentists did not buy gas from Nangaroo.

Responding to the petition, Queensland Health Minister Tim Nicholls acknowledged the harm caused by nangs. He said that since November 2025 Queensland Health had been able to seize nitrous oxide products found at retail and wholesale premises selling or storing illicit tobacco and nicotine products, with more than 27,800 canisters and bulbs seized. Nitrous oxide is classified as a Schedule 6 substance in Queensland, he said, and additional actions to strengthen community safety responses would be considered.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration has launched two proposals to amend the scheduling of nitrous oxide. Rebecca Lang, chief executive of the Queensland Network of Alcohol and Other Drug Agencies, supports the first proposal to limit the sale of large canisters, but not the second, which would reschedule other products as a controlled drug. "The issue for us is always that all these things focus on supply, and there's never any kind of consideration in these processes to the reasons why people are interested in the products," she says. She also said there was no proposal for community education about the risk of harm, and that criminalising personal possession has not proven effective in reducing harm or use for at least 25 years.