Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "Japan's Post-War Meth Panic (& How They Stopped It) | Audio" video.

@poetryflynn3712 Australian aboriginals have sniffed gasoline for as long as gasoline has been readily available - 100 years. It is really hard to understand why. While it acts as an anaesthetic, it is really obnoxious to sniff. However, when the Federal Government banned lead in gasoline, the oil companies substituted toluene to maintain the octane rating. The toluene content apparently makes you high, and that's when lots of aboriginal kids started hanging open tins of gasoline around their necks. This was fixed by banning toluene in gasoline sold in rural areas.
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@armamentarmedarm1699 ; It is not hard to understand why dispossessed people would want to get high. But leaded gasoline is not a way to get high. It is just a way to get extreme throat and chest discomfort, a headache, lethagy, and brain damage. Paint thinners I can understand. Unleaded gasoline containing toluene I can understand. Not leaded gasoline.
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@AnthemUnanthemed : You write nonsense. What come out of the exhaust of vehicles contains practically no hydrocarbons, unless the engine is faulty. What comes out is the products of combustion, that is carbon dioxide & water vapour, and the nitrogen from the air. But if you sniff gasoline, you get what's in it straight. In pre-emission controlled days, engine were run slightly rich as that gave better performance with simple carburettors, giving trace amounts of carbon monoxide, which was rapidly oxidised to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You also get small amount of nitrogen oxides, which are nasty but can't make you high. Not all hydrocarbons are the same. Gasoline is long chain molecules - carbon atoms linked to carbon atoms in a chain with 2 hydrogen atoms per carbon atom hanging off the sides, known as alkanes, octane being the archetype, Toluene has carbon rings instead of chains, and a higher fraction of carbon vs hydrogen as a result. The carbon rings give it very different chemical properties. I did not say aborigines sniffed leaded gasoline now. I said they used to when it was available, but not very much. I said their sniffing ballooned when toluene doped gasoline became available as a substitute for leaded gasoline, so the Australian government arranged for it not to be sold in rural areas where sniffing was common. Rural gasoline suppliers sell '"Opal"" gasoline that does not contain toluene and has mostly fixed the sniffing problem, because they can't get high on it - only sick. Look it up.
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Asianometry at 3:27 said "In 1938 during World War II ....." Oops. For Japan, WW2 commenced on 7 December 1941 when they bombed Pearl Habour. Perhaps he meant the China invasion, which started in 1931, and is not normally considered part of World War II.
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this reminds me of my wife. she was given ketamine in hospital to reduce pain from her operation. She didn't like ketamine at all. It made her feel sick. But street kids buy it from crooked vetinary surgeons. It is a mystery why.
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