June 1, 2006
On the Web site www.stone2005.typepad.com, a side column entitled “Poppers People & Places” features several different images that reveal themselves to be user icons connected to personal blogs.
Click a face and you are instantly privy to a blogger’s discussion about poppers, the common term for the inhaled alkyl nitrites popular in the gay community for their relaxing and enhanced effects during sex.
“You feel super duper great and sex feels awesome,” said a man with the username Chargenda on blogspot.com. “On the downside, you can just tell it is killing like millions of little brain cells every time you do it.”
Friends of the man chimed in with comments, mostly cautioning or sharing bad experiences with the substance. Then, seemingly from out of nowhere came an anonymous comment: “Poppers are perfectly safe. Someone here said it was ’sick’ to use something during sex. Tell that to the millions of men who use Viagra®, which does about the same thing as RUSH® poppers do … People should be free to enjoy sex with a consenting partner in any manner they choose.”
The anonymous comment went on to reference some Web sites of possible interest, including, perhaps not so coincidentally, the stone2005 site that brings outside visitors to the man’s blog in the first place.
Similarly, the Livejournal user cuore_felice34 blogged about his experience at a party and then mentioned a dream he had in which he and his friends were all carrying Jungle Juice brand poppers. Amidst the comments from his friends about his busy weekend, once again there was an anonymous response, this one stating, “Interesting about the jungle juice poppers. But have you ever tried real RUSH? It’s the best in the world,” followed by a web link to purchase the product.
It is unclear whether many of the men who randomly blogged about poppers know that they were targeted for anonymous pro-poppers comments which in turn transformed people’s personal pages into advertisements for the drugs.
A man with the username Dan4th, whose Livejournal also was featured on the stone2005 site, told the B.A.R. that he was unaware of outside links to a post in which he asked his friends to share their experiences with poppers. He immediately wrote to stone2005 administrators and had his photograph removed.
Confusion lingers
It’s an increasingly informed world when it comes to sex, drugs, and the Internet, but the practices surrounding poppers remain a mystery for many gay men. Confusion lingers on everything from the actual effects of the substances to the local and federal laws governing their regulation.
It is this confusion, claims longtime HIV activist Hank Wilson, upon which the poppers industry depends, and he points to Web sites like stone2005.typepad.com, www.allaboutpoppers.com, and www.virusmythpoppersmyth.org as part of a deliberate effort to continue to profit off substances that have long since been banned for sale in the United States due to their potential health risks.
Representatives from those Web sites did not return requests for information by press time. A disclaimer on allaboutpoppers.com claims not to condone any particular product and offer just the facts. But the facts posted by poppers sites tend to reference very old debates about poppers causing AIDS and Kaposi’s sarcoma, debates that were seemingly put to rest once the HIV virus was discovered.
“In a lot of people’s minds, poppers got crossed off the list when HIV was discovered. Once something gets crossed off the list, a lot of people get stuck. But the research has continued,” said Wilson. “But the research has continued.”
What’s missing from much of the pro-poppers data, said Wilson, is subsequent research showing poppers’ immunosuppressive qualities and possible links to HIV transmission and the development of some cancers.
In the 1990s, for instance, some studies linked poppers to unprotected sex, and other reports warned that mixing Viagra and poppers – both of which dilate blood vessels – could result in fatal complications from low blood pressure. In June 2005, the U.S. National Cancer Institute published research from the University of California, San Francisco’s Peter V. Chin-Hong showing that the risk of developing low-grade precancerous anal lesions is associated with having multiple partners and using poppers during sex. Although this report was published last year, even Wilson said he didn’t receive word of this data until a few weeks ago.
“I agree with the poppers industry in that there’s not enough research out there. But that doesn’t mean all the research is to be dismissed. A broad-brushed green light [on poppers] is really hurting people,” said Wilson, noting that most substances are acknowledged to carry some risks. “Some of these sites characterize poppers as safe as aspirin. If I was seeking information or trying to navigate through the epidemic I would be easily misled.”
Wilson himself is an example of someone stuck in the poppers debate, albeit from the other side of the equation. After founding the Committee to Monitor Poppers in 1981 and working with many concerned doctors and community members (many of whom have since died) he is now somewhat of a lone crusader in the fight to make the community aware of poppers’ possible pitfalls.
Last month, Wilson filed a formal complaint against sales of poppers by poppers.com, a company that targets gay male consumers and has operated a vending booth at the annual International Mr. Leather competition in the past. Mary Toro, a representative from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, wrote to Wilson that “past investigations have shown that many of the ‘popper’ products that we examined contained cyclohexyl nitrite or other complex alcohols and not the regulated nitrites” of butyl nitrite, isopropyl nitrite and other nitrites. “We do not believe that this is always the case, rest assured, it just makes the ‘finding’ of violative product more resource intensive.”
Wilson said that nitrites not regulated by the CPSC would fall under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration and that even with legal nitrites “it’s not legal to market them as inhalants.” Still, he is aware that the federal government has basically acknowledged the near impossibility of effectively prosecuting Internet-based sales. That’s where his efforts come in, he said, to try to balance the conversation.
“My role is to flash the yellow light,” he said. “The message doesn’t have to be a ‘don’t’ message, just an information message. If I use poppers one night when I’m jerking off and it takes a few days for my immune system to recover, I should know that, in case I meet Mr. Hot the next day and need to make choices about the kind of sex I want to have.”
“If you look at the Google searches on poppers you’d walk away thinking all the concern was homophobic,” said Wilson, who as a sex-positive leatherman sees the debate from another angle: “If this stuff was marketed to high school students I think the FDA and Consumer Product Safety Commission would approach it much differently.”
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