Police officers have installed a nitrous oxide bin in a Buckinghamshire town following local concerns about the now-banned drug’s prevalence in the county.

Members of Thames Valley Police’s Aylesbury Vale South Neighbourhood Team launched the force’s first-ever nitrous oxide amnesty bin at Southcourt Baptist Church on Penn Road in Aylesbury yesterday, Monday, February 12.

Residents have been encouraged to anonymously drop off any canisters or nitrous oxide-related paraphernalia into the bins whilst out and about, with proceeds from the recycled canisters going towards the funding of other community projects.

The South Neighbourhood team worked with several figures and organisations in Aylesbury to install the new bin, including Councillor Waheed Raja, Dr Hussein and the Southcourt Mosque, with a purported end goal of making drug disposal “accessible to everyone in the community”.

A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police said: “We want to remind the public that Nitrous Oxide is now a class C controlled substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

“We will continue to work together with our community and partners to spread awareness, target offenders, keep the community clean and save lives.”

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Before the ban came into force in November 2023, the substance – also known as ‘laughing gas’ – was widely prevalent in the Buckinghamshire area.

Speaking after the ban, Darren Hayday, Buckinghamshire Council’s representative for the West Wycombe ward, said usage in the region had been steadily mounting with larger nitrous oxide cylinders slowly replacing small silver canisters.

He said the endemic was “horrendous on a health level, but on the littering side too”, with the larger containers especially difficult to dispose of.

Adding: “This is a very dangerous drug to take, so I’m hopeful that criminalisation will make it much less accessible and that that will have a big effect.”