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Subject: Fwd:
please read if you have kids or grandkids
If you have children or
grandchildren, PLEASE read this officer's story carefully.
You can also verify the story
at http://www.snopes.com/toxins/dustoff.asp
Dust Off (or a variant of the
product) is available everywhere there's a computer.
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First I'm going to tell you little about me and my ! family. My name
is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known ationwide
for its crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were
# 2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was
certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old
because he was shot in the line of duty.
He lives with us now and I still
train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact
that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow
it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that
I know about drugs. I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all
our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs.
Makes! them promise they won't.
I like building computers
occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was
working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust
so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of
DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer.
A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used.
I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their
computer and messing around
with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them. On
February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack
which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of
Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my
computer.
On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my
wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went
downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He
was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She
called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would
sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was
never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over.
He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of
his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was
dead.
I am a police officer
and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We
later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the
propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other
drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM I
found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through
15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take off
from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them
dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle
how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best
friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. Its just compressed
air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said no.
Kyle
was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. Its a
refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy
gas. Heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps
the good air, with oxygen, out. That's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It
decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. Kyle was right. It
can't hurt you. IT KILLS YOU.
The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level
that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly,
terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. IT'S
NOT AN OVERDOSE. It's Russian Roulette. You don't die later. Or not
feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're
breathing it in. If not, you die within 2 seconds of finishing "the hit."
That's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes
were still open.
The
experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe it's huffing. As
adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why
it's more accepted. There is no chemical reaction. no strong odor. It
doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he
died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes
frostbite. If I had only known. It's easy to say hey, it's my life
an! d I'll do what I want. But it isn't. Others are always effected. This
has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole in my heart and
soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't describe it.
There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I
do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed
up.
One won't talk about it. The other will only
sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she
is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we
were
safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about
them.
After Kyle died another story came out. A
Probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a
student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom.
This student told him about another student who also had some in his
locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they
don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a dare or plus
program there. So rather than
tell everyone about this "new" way of getting high they found, they hid it. The
probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school,
then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media
and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house.
We need to get this out of our
homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new and some
"professionals" do know about. It just isn't talked about much, except by
the kids. They all seem to know about it.
April 2nd was 1
month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And
every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to
see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can't help but
wonder If I died and went to
Hell.
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This Officer is asking
for everyone who receives this email to forward it to
everyone in their address book, even Law Enforcement
Officers.
Vicki
Hay
Support Services
785-339-4035
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