Traffic collisions and nitrous oxide

Devon & Cornwall Police Freedom of Information (FOI) ref: 01/FOI/25/008486/H

I write in connection with your request for information, which was received by Devon & Cornwall Police on 2 July 2025. I note you seek access to the following information:

- How many traffic collisions have there been where nitrous oxide has been involved per year?
Please provide data separately for each year: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024. Please provide as much data for 2025 as possible closest to the current day.
 
- How many of those traffic collisions involving nitrous oxide have resulted in one or more fatalities? Please specify how many for each incident.
- How many arrests have been recorded for the illegal sale of nitrous oxide from the start of 2019 to the 2nd of July 2025?

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within Devon & Cornwall Police to locate information relevant to your request and I can confirm that some information is held which falls within the description specified in your request. However, it is estimated that to locate, retrieve and extract the specific information is likely to take longer than 18 hours.

As per section 12(3) of the FOI Act 2000, the time period of 18 hours is considered the ‘appropriate limit’ to the amount of time or money spent on one individual request under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. Therefore, the cost of providing you with the confirmed information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond.

In accordance with section 17(5) of the FOI Act 2000, the Force is not obliged to respond to your request and this letter acts as a refusal notice for your request.

The following explanation has been provided to help you understand why your request engages section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000.

The Alliance Operations Department has confirmed that there is no ‘flag’ or marker for Nitrous Oxide; to answer your request would need a manual review of all dangerous driving collisions and related arrests. A recent similar request found 8,711 arrests between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2024. On this basis, for the time period you have requested there will be over 18,800 arrests to manually review.

Furthermore, Nitrous Oxide (NO) is extremely difficult to detect as it leaves the bloodstream very quickly, that is why it has been used in dentistry as the recovery is short. See article from Leads NHS Trust: Inhalation sedation - under 16 years old - Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

This means that it would be both very time consuming to find any relevant information and that any occurrences that were found would almost certainly be ‘suspected’ use of NO rather than ‘proven’ use of NO.

If you would like to make a new request, which narrows the scope of your current request, we may be able to comply with that request within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, we are not able to advise on how you might be able to alter your request to gain meaningful data even for a shorter time period.

Should you have any queries and wish to discuss your request, please do get in touch and we will be happy to assist.

You have the right to request a re-examination of your case under Devon & Cornwall Police’s internal review procedure. This request should be submitted in writing within 40 working days, using the details at the end of this letter.

Should you have any further queries, please contact the FOI unit quoting the reference number above.