CHAPTER 4: Inhalants

Although one recent report on the Marshalls mentioned "some anecdotal stories about widespread gasoline-sniffing among children," including the tale of a death due to gas sniffing, the use of inhalants in the Marshalls has been generally unremarked upon in the drug literature in Micronesia (Wood 1991:56).

The use of inhalants, although not especially common, is sometimes regarded as the first rung on the drug ladder for Micronesians. Young boys throughout the region are thought to begin sniffing in their early teens but usually stop well before they reach the age of 20, often moving on to marijuana smoking and then alcohol. An added cause of concern is the health risks that inhalant abuse poses. These range from lead poisoning to brain damage and possible higher incidence of mental disorders (Marshall et al. 1994:26-28). Despite the dangers they present, the use of inhalants has not received much attention-"in part because the substances that are abused by sniffers are legal, easily obtainable, and normally not viewed as drugs" (Marshall et al. 1994:24).

Inhaling is one of the rare types of drug use that is done outside of a social context. Unlike drinking and even smoking marijuana, drugs around which social rituals have developed, the use of inhalants is usually a solitary activity. Young boys will normally go off by themselves, sometimes with one other friend, to sniff gas or glue in some out-of-the-way place where they are unlikely to be disturbed by adults. Even if the boy goes with a friend, almost no social interaction takes place while the two are sniffing.

Survey Data on Inhalants

The survey data showed only 15 people currently using inhalants. Although this may reflect the current rates in the Marshalls, the reader should be cautioned that sniffing may be under-reported in this survey despite the vigilance of the field investigator inasmuch as inhalant use is harder to detect than other types of drug use. Sniffing, as was explained above, tends to be a "hidden vice;" boys characteristically sneak off and sniff the substance alone and out of sight of others. In a survey like this that employs key informants, the practice may go unobserved.

The data also reveal that the pattern commonly ascribed to inhalant use in the islands, however well it may apply to FSM, does not hold true in the Marshall Islands. The differences are such that we must postulate an altogether distinct use pattern for the drug.

Current Prevalence Rate by Sex and Age

All 15 of the current users recorded in the survey were males. Inhalant use, then, follows the familiar sex-linked pattern in which males use drugs and females generally abstain.

All except two of the 15 current users of inhalants recorded in the survey are from Ebeye; the other two live in Majuro. There are no instances of inhalant use found on the other, less developed atolls.

While the rate of inhalant use is not high, as Table 4.1 indicates, it is of interest that the highest rates are found in the 20-29 and 30-44 age groups, which show current use rates of 2.3% and 2.0% respectively. This is very different from the pattern in FSM, where the highest rates of inhalant use are registered for boys in their teens and the rate falls away to almost zero by the age of 20. It appears that in the Marshalls gasoline and glue sniffing are addictions of older males rather than merely a passing early stage in the drug cycle, as is true in Chuuk and Pohnpei of FSM. To put it another way, Marshallese inhale ten years later than Chuukese and Pohnpeians.

It may be noted that the overall rate of current use among Marshallese males over the age of ten (1.2%) is twice the general male rate for Chuuk (0.7%), the state with the highest rate in FSM.

Frequency of Use

Table 4.2, which shows the frequency of inhalant use, indicates that most of those sniffing gas or glue do so several times a week. Over half the users (54%) for whom we have data on frequency are reported to use these inhalants every day or every other day. This high frequency of usage contrasts with the distribution that was recorded for FSM, where most users resorted to the drug a few times a month and none more than once or twice a week (Micronesian Seminar 1997:57). This striking difference in the frequency pattern in the Marshalls would seem to confirm our finding that those who sniff in the Marshalls are older males who have become addicted to the use of inhalants.

Estimated Number of Users

Use of inhalants, as we have seen in Table 4.1, is confined to males. Using the survey data to generate the number of males currently using inhalants in the Marshalls, we may estimate their number to be about 260. A breakdown by age group is shown in Table 4.3.