The party’s no longer popping.
The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on “poppers,” a recreational party drug popular within the LGBTQ+ community, multiple outlets report.
Poppers, made of alkyl nitrates, have operated in a legal gray area for decades — masquerading as cleaning solvents and nail polish remover, according to Fast Company — but the inhalants have now seemingly fallen under scrutiny.
Double Scorpio, a Texas-based poppers producer, announced this week that it “stopped all operations following a search and seizure” performed by the FDA, according to a statement on their website, which has been wiped of all other information.
“We don’t have a lot of information to share but we believe that the FDA has performed similar actions towards other companies recently,” the company wrote, thanking their loyal customers for their “trust” during their eight years in business.
While The Post contacted the FDA for comment, a spokesperson for the agency told Fast Company that, due to policy, “the FDA does not comment on possible criminal investigations.”
The outlet also reports that multiple other poppers brands have gone silent and scrubbed their internet presence, such as Rush producer Pac-West Distributing (PWD), whose site now only displays the brand logo, and poppers seller Nitro-Solv, which announced on their site they have “ceased operations.”
AFAB Industrial — a fellow Rush producer and once an outspoken face of the poppers industry — has gone ghost, too, according to Fast Company. In 2021, AFAB International owner Everett Farr alleged he controlled 75% of the market.
“As far as I’m concerned, I sell nail polish remover,” he told Buzzfeed at the time, although he admitted that “without this product, a multitude of gay men cannot have gay sex.”
Poppers, sold in a tiny plastic bottle at convenience stores, sex shops and gas stations across the country, cause a euphoric high when sniffed and have muscle relaxant properties that propelled the inhalant to popularity as a sex drug in the gay community.
They were previously prescribed for chest pain and, in the 1960s, poppers, made with amyl nitrites at the time, were ruled a prescription drug by the FDA. While manufacturers switched to using butyl nitrites as a substitute, the chemical was banned in 1988, followed by a ban on isopropyl nitrites two years later.
Regulation of isopropyl nitrites, however, had an exception for “commercial purposes,” according to Fast Company, a loophole for producers of poppers.
While poppers have previously been incorrectly linked to AIDS in the LGBTQ+ community — an unfounded stance Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has doubled down on despite lacking evidence — the misuse of poppers has been linked to adverse health effects.
These include racing pulse, flushed face and neck, headache, vomiting, nausea and vision issues, and ingesting poppers could even be fatal.
“It’s not an energy drink,” Joseph J. Palamar, an associate professor in population health at NYU Langone Health who studies the use of poppers, told NBC News. “You’ll definitely be poisoned.”
A study published this month in Clinical Toxicology investigated an area in New York City in which poison control centers saw an uptick in poppers poisoning, according to NBC News. Researchers questioned workers at 86 stores that sold poppers, asking how to use the product. Half said to inhale it, 44% did not know and 8% advised ingesting.
In 2021, the FDA warned not to ingest nor inhale the drug, claiming the behavior “seriously jeopardizes your health.”
“These chemicals can be caustic and damage the skin or other tissues they come in contact with, cause difficulty breathing, extreme drops in blood pressure, decreases in blood oxygen levels, seizures, heart arrhythmia, coma, and death,” Judy McMeekin, Pharm. D., Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs, said in the FDA statement.
“Do not ingest or inhale under any circumstances.”
