The Senate adopts the ban on the sale of nitrous oxide to people | EUROtoday

After the Assembly, the Senate adopted, Thursday April 26, its personal textual content prohibiting the sale to people of nitrous oxide, the misuse of which has turn into a “scourge” in accordance with the federal government. Nicknamed “laughing gas”this product bought within the type of cartridges or canisters, inhaled for its euphoric results via balloons, was significantly singled out for the rise in highway mortality final yr.

Several dramatic information tales involving drivers who had consumed it made the headlines. The Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, introduced that measures on nitrous oxide could be included in a invoice on day by day safety, anticipated in Parliament by the summer season.

But with out ready for it, parliamentary initiatives have multiplied. The Senate voted in March to penalize the misuse of nitrous oxide, in addition to a textual content tackling the problem of waste generated by this consumption. In January 2025, the Assembly adopted a textual content prohibiting the sale of nitrous oxide to people.

Its rapporteur, the deputy La France insoumise Idir Boumertit, additionally regretted on Thursday that the Senate didn’t take up his textual content as a substitute, to have it adopted extra rapidly as a part of the parliamentary shuttle: “What a waste, more wasted time”he wrote on X.

Toxic substance

But for the socialist creator of the senatorial invoice studied Thursday, Marion Canalès: “The government must take up this subject. (…) Rather than being sluggish in shuttles, the idea was to say, Parliament has expressed itself on the subject”she informed Agence France-Presse.

In element, in accordance with the adopted textual content, it will be “prohibits the sale, offering, possession or transport of nitrous oxide”. A decree should specify to which professionals the sale stays licensed. The Minister Delegate for the Interior, Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, whereas recognizing a “scourge” for the “public health”issued an opinion of ” wisdom “that’s to say neither for nor towards, on the senatorial textual content.

She highlighted France’s ongoing efforts on the European degree to categorise nitrous oxide as a poisonous substance. Adopt “an isolated national system” upstream would run “a legal risk, that of a fragility with regard to the principle of free movement of goods”she argued.

A place very poorly obtained by many senators. “The role of a government is not to observe or comment on a problem, or to wait for possible European legislation”informed him the chief of the socialist senators, Patrick Kanner.