Drôme: a nightclub manager prosecuted for selling "laughing gas"

A large quantity of nitrous oxide - better known as "laughing gas" - was seized at "Gold", a nightclub in Montélimar where it was distributed to customers, the Valence prosecutor's office announced on Thursday. .

The discotheque is already the subject of a complaint in the case of evening injections.

The police who searched the "Gold" on May 5, discovered two bottles of nitrous oxide behind the counter, a box with 97 tips (used to inject the gas into a balloon to then be inhaled, editor's note), 47 boxes of six bottles, at the back of the establishment, for a total value estimated at 5,000 euros, lists France bleu.

The prosecution clarified that these cartridges were “either offered at the entrance in the manner of a free drink, or sold at the bar”.

Read alsoLaughing gas abuse: "It's sold everywhere, we don't realize it's a drug"

A total of 288 cartridges of this gas were seized at "Gold", affirms AFP, leading to the hearing on Tuesday of the manager, who will be prosecuted on several counts as "provocation of a minor for misuse of an everyday consumer product to obtain its psychoactive effects" and "sale or supply of nitrous oxide to a minor".

“In the absence of a criminal record”, she was summoned on September 26 as part of a criminal criminal orientation, a simplified procedure to be served with the decision of the prosecution.

The offenses are punishable by a fine of 3,750 to 15,000 euros, recalls France bleu.

The prosecution requested a fine of 3,000 euros, including 1,500 euros suspended in this criminal order procedure and a possible decision to close the “Gold” administratively now belongs to the prefecture.

The “Gold” cited in the stings affair

The inhalation of laughing gas found in the siphons at Chantilly has been on the rise for two years.

Its misuse has made it popular with young people.

Until June, its sale was for the general public.

But in view of its dangerousness, the government banned its sale to minors and restricted the quantities for sale.

The name of the Montilienne nightclub also appears among the series of recent complaints for alleged stings in nightclubs.

On May 2, a 15-year-old woman, living in the Paris region, filed a complaint saying that she had received an injection on the evening of April 29 in the Gold, according to Le Dauphiné released.

But that's not all, in a press release published on May 2, the Drôme prosecutor's office indicated that a 17-year-old young Ardéchoise reported having been "possibly drugged without her knowledge by a substance which would have been put in his glass during an evening spent in the nightclub "Le Gold" in March 2022", reports France Bleu in another article.

“No one was drugged or raped at Gold,” reacted the manager, believing that the facts had not occurred within her establishment.