I feel compelled to share this

[ARCHIE]

Latest Drug in Middle School - Dusting 'Dusting'

First, I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name
is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for
it's crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were # 2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs.

I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at
least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they won't.

I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one
in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers.
They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I
bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them.

On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer.

On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife
went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.

I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse
and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM.

I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9
through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take
off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10
seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. It's just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said so.

Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air . It also contains a
propellant called R2. It's a refrigerant like what is used in your
refrigerator. It is a heavy gas. Heavier than air. When you inhale it,
it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out That's why
you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your
heart. Kyle was right. It can't hurt you. IT KILLS YOU.

The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level
that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go
randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. IT'S NOT AN OVERDOSE . It's Russian Roulette. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in. If not you die within 2 seconds of finishing "the hit." That 's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open. The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe its huffing.=2 0As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why its more accepted. There is no chemical
reaction, no strong odor. It doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle
complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known.

It's easy to say hey, it's my life and I'll do what I want . But it isn't.
Others are always affected. This has forever changed our family's
life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The
pain is so immense I can't describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed up. One won't talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them.

After Kyle died another story came out. A probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there.
They don't even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than
tell everyone about this "new" way of getting high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house.

We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using
Dust Off isn't new and some "professionals" do know about. It just isn't talked
about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it. April 2 nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th
birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can ' t help but wonder If I died and went to Hell.


This Officer is asking for everyone who receives this email to forward
it to everyone in their address book, even Law Enforcement Officers

[Nikki+2]

OMG that is so horrifying and sad. I will definitely talk to my 13 year old daughter about this today. Thank you for posting it.

[Tillys_mom]

Oh wow!!! That's really sad. Thanks for sharing.

[Amy81]

OMG thats terrible...

[mistyinca]

Scary! And Snopes says this is a true one...

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/dustoff.asp They talk about it in more detail and provide info on more deaths here...

[lidarose]

So very, very sorry for your loss. We do everything we can to protect our children and I know this must be extremely hard for you, I can't imagine it. They should take this product off of the market asap! Not like it's pertinent to the survival of man, and if it's killing our kids it needs to go. I will spread the word around my small corner of the world, but where I live we have to worry so much about meth labs blowing up (southest KY) that I doubt anyone has thought about those cans of death.

[LuvMySissy]

Tragic and completely senseless!!! Forwarding this to everyone I know with school-aged children!!!!

[SevenGirl]

OMG! I have never heard of this!! How scary! Thank you so much for sharing with all of us!

[ARCHIE]

Originally Posted by lidarose

So very, very sorry for your loss. We do everything we can to protect our children and I know this must be extremely hard for you, I can't imagine it. They should take this product off of the market asap! Not like it's pertinent to the survival of man, and if it's killing our kids it needs to go. I will spread the word around my small corner of the world, but where I live we have to worry so much about meth labs blowing up (southest KY) that I doubt anyone has thought about those cans of death.

I can see how you could have thought this was my story. I should have
been more specific. This was an e-mail that was sent to me this am
and I wanted to share it with all of you since most of you have school
age children. It's so important to be up on the things that might effect
them and to talk to them about the dangers of things they think might
not hurt them. Yes, this is a very tragic story.

[AngieDoogles]

Wow, that's so sad. I knew that inhalants can be lethal, but when I first read this, I thought this particular story had been exaggerated to pull on heartstrings, as a lot of these types of emails do. Snopes says that it is all 100% true, even down to the dog being shot while on duty. Thanks for posting Archie and thanks to Mistyinca for the snopes link.

[DENISE517]

omgosh this is sooo terrible. I'll have to tell my daughter about it.

i know in high school i worked for my friends dad - he owned the dairy queen and at night after closing we would take the old metal cans of cool whip that were almost gone and suck them in and inhaul them and they would make us talk weird and we'd get dizzy. I just thought back them it was fun and harmless. Later learned about how bad it was for you. We're lucky we didnt all die. We did it sooo many times.

[Buddy-licious]

First of all, I am glad this was not your child but the fact that is was someone's child is bad enough!!!!
Reading your post my heart was pounding!!!!! It is amazing to me what kids will do these days to get high.
Thank you for sharing!!!! My son is eleven and my husband have had many talks with him about drugs & alcohol. We want him to ve very clear on the dangers even though he is so young!!!!!

[girlybella]

how scary and sad..thank you for sharing this information, I am passing it along.

[Superstarkba]

Thats scary.

[Yorkiekids]

Sorry for your loss, and thanks for the heads up. We use that all the time to clean our computers. I will be sure to tell my kids about the fatallaty that could occur.