LAUGHING GAS DEATH LEADS TO PRISON

A Phoenix businessman who sold laughing gas to a Virginia Tech student
who suffocated while using it was sentenced Monday to 15 months in
prison and fined $40,000. Lawrence Teiman, 36, was the first person
convicted of selling nitrous oxide as a mislabeled drug. His
prosecution in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Va., was intended to
send a message to other sellers that abuse of the gas is both
dangerous and a crime. The gas, commonly used with oxygen as an
anesthetic for dental procedures, is readily available at full
strength in miniature tanks, called whippets, sold by head shops and
other outlets. Whippets are not illegal as long as their sale conforms
to their intended use as the propellant in a whipped cream dispenser.
An estimated 6 million people nationwide, many of them teens and young
adults, have used the gas recreationally. Although Teiman marked boxes
"For Food Use Only" when he sold whippets over the Internet, a jury
decided that evidence pointed to his having sold the gas as a drug.
Computer sciences sophomore Andrew McCoy, 20, died in November 1999
using the first shipment he ordered.

To maximize the effects of the gas, he strapped a plastic bag over his
head, but passed out and suffocated. Teiman, who had set up the Web site
and branched into selling smoke-shop paraphernalia in his two Shirts 'N'
Things shops in Mesa about two years earlier, removed those items after the
death.
A bill prohibiting sale to anyone under 18 is being considered in the
Legislature.