Bizarre, Criminal law

Can You Guess This Man’s Alleged Crime?

The problem with being a “huffer” is that the paint can leave a fairly easy marker for police. Kelly Gibson took this mugshot on his 48th arrest for inhaling the toxic chemicals.

Presumably, for your 50th anniversary, you huff gold paint. That was the choice of Patrick Tribett, right.

Gibson was arrested after an argument with his wife in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They found him huffing silver spray paint from a bag.

The crime of inhaling toxic vapors becomes with the added dangers of cardiac arrest, brain damage and other health problems.

Sniffing paint is a bit dated. It was popular when I was a kid — with a long line of dead teens to attest to its dangers. Recently, several teens have died after inhaling the chemical difluoroethane — commonly found in the computer cleaning spray known as Dust-Off.

Gibson is a bit old for his crime group. Huffing remains a habit for teens who either die or graduate up to other forms of substance abuse. As when I was a kid, this remains a “poor man’s high.” The 2000 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found that the population of inhalant abusers is one average found in the 12 to 17 age group, followed by the 18 to 25 year old population.

Source: NY Daily News

14 thoughts on “Can You Guess This Man’s Alleged Crime?”

  1. I’m really impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your weblog. Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself? Either way keep up the excellent quality writing, it’s rare to see a great blog like this one nowaday

  2. After a careful scientific study of the two photographs, I have concluded that huffing paint makes 50% of its practitioners happy, and 50% sad. According to the standards of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News that means that “the jury is still out” on whether paint huffing is a good thing or a bad thing.

  5. You know, I was going to go there Buddha and SL….well not there….but…. I hesitated…. and see you took the bait….

  6. BIL,

    “Solicitation or Molestation of the Tin Man”

    I was debating whether to go there or not … glad to see I’m not the only one whose mind is in the gutter 🙂

  7. I was going to say “Solicitation or Molestation of the Tin Man” but “Huffing Paint” works . . .

  8. Will someone get some turpentine and wipe that smile off his face, please? He reminds me of the Joker on Batman. Just a lot dumber.

  9. There is no doubt what he was doing,from what I see. Hope the arresting officer is not a cigarette smoker,have fumes do travel.And the user to for that matter.

  11. The NSHDA survey and Monitoring the Future (a survey of teens that uses a different methodology), find a small blip in inhalant use around age 13 and very little use at other ages. This guy is a real anomaly.

    Given the lack of efficacy of scare tactics, I wouldn’t give much credit to th usual crude prevention approaches. Rather, inhalant use is more a self-limiting kind of drug exploration in this country than anything else. Inhalant use is common among low income adolescents in many foreign countries–but even those places it seems restricted to a particular age group.

  13. Presumably there’s some way for him to clean the paint off, that the didn’t get to use because of the police? He can’t really walk around town like that.

    I think if we ever decriminalize marijuana, we should make a rule that you have to grow it yourself, unless you have a medical condition precluding you from doing so. Then not only would we get people to stop huffing paint (which seems amazingly dumb and dangerous), but the drug users would get some sunshine and maybe learn a little bit of work ethic from home gardening.

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