Aurora readies crackdown on ‘gray market’ products, like nitrous oxide, at vape shops and corner stores

Trevor Vaughn entered Vapor Maven in Aurora last week and immediately took in the lay of the land.

“We’re going to be here for a bit,” said Aurora’s manager of licensing, noting that the strip mall vape shop near South Buckley Road and East Mississippi Avenue had no license to sell cannabis. “There is a ton of THC product in here.”

Vaughn then eyed a neatly stacked collection of Infuzd nitrous oxide canisters on display at the center of the small shop. He asked the store manager why they were there.

“They are supposed to be used to make whipped cream,” the manager responded, drawing a knowing smile from Vaughn. She didn’t identify herself and asked The Denver Post, which accompanied licensing officials during Thursday’s visit, not to photograph her.

He told the manager that Vapor Maven had about a month before the nitrous tanks — commonly used by people to get a quick but powerful high by inhaling the gas inside — would likely be confiscated. That’s because the Aurora City Council is expected Monday night to approve a sweeping measure banning the sale of an array of “gray market” substances and drug paraphernalia that are commonly found in convenience stores, gas stations, and smoke and vape shops.

Beyond the products its inspectors find that aren’t supposed to be sold outside licensed retailers — including those containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana — Aurora has identified a number of concerning substances. They’re largely unregulated and can have adverse health impacts on users, and they’re often dressed up as something innocuous, officials say.

Those substances include nitrous oxide; Amanita Muscaria, an adulterated hallucinogenic mushroom; Mad Honey, a honey that contains grayanotoxins, which can produce nausea, vomiting or dizziness; synthetic cannabinoids; and poppers, a nitrate product that the Federal Drug Administration says is not safe to inhale or ingest.

The city has also written its ordinance to target items that often double as drug paraphernalia.

Roses in a glass — thin glass tubes filled with a mini silk rose, in concert with steel mesh scrubbing pads cut up as filters — have long been used to assemble what Vaughn calls a makeshift “crack kit.” Meth users can often obtain distinctive bulbed pipes, called oil burners, at vape shops to get their fix.

“It’s fair to say I’m seeing this stuff with regularity,” Vaughn said.

A common sight at concerts, nitrous oxide abuse is soaring, prompting health concerns

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And it's not just in Aurora, where the council unanimously approved the proposed ordinance in a preliminary vote July 28.

Last month, Denver city officials issued a warning that the city had found edible products made with psilocybin mushrooms for sale, illegally, at local gas stations and vape stores. While psilocybin is decriminalized for personal use, cultivation and sharing in Colorado, it is still illegal to sell the drug.

The July 24 warning came a year after the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment launched a probe of products made by California’s Prophet Premium Blends and sold under the Diamond Shruumz brand. They were linked to 113 illnesses in the United States, including at least two in Colorado.

Aurora Councilwoman Alison Coombs , who co-sponsored the measure that's now set for a final vote, said state health authorities don't have the capacity to do regular inspections in the city.

"The concern in relation to the substances is (that) they are unregulated, and people don't know what they're putting in their bodies," Coombs said. "It's a health and safety issue."

Concerns don't just extend to the user. According to a memo accompanying the proposed ordinance, the city says when outlets that sell these products are clustered in close proximity to one another, it often results in "elevated crime rates and open-air drug use" on the block.

"It's not just in one place -- but throughout the city -- where there is a concentration of places that sell this stuff and then see criminal activity," Coombs said.

Back at Vapor Maven, Vaughn and Lead Licensing Investigator Charles Keyes inventoried and removed the offending products from shelves during their visit.

After more than an hour, they filled three 96-gallon trash bags with all manner of suspected cannabis products, from tubs of loose gummies to bagged edibles to THC vape cartridges to pre-rolled joints.

"All of this stuff is illegal," Keyes said.

The Aurora inspectors spoke to a higher-up in the company that owns the store over the phone, telling him that he could surrender the THC products in question or contest the matter in court. The Post tried to reach the owner of Vapor Maven, which is based in Arkansas, but did not hear back late last week.

Nitrous oxide is the big play these days on the recreational drug scene, Vaughn said.

"Nitrous, in the last year or so, is something I've seen a lot of, along with an increase in the size of the tanks and the number of flavors," he said.

The Post recently chronicled the rise in use of nitrous oxide to get high in Colorado, especially among music lovers on the concert circuit. Long used in dentist's offices to sedate patients (under the colloquial name laughing gas) or in the culinary arts -- notably to puff up whipped cream -- nitrous oxide use can lead to addiction, injury and death when huffed for fun, experts say.

From 2019 to 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the U.S. saw a 110% increase in deaths due to hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation to the brain, stemming from nitrous oxide abuse.

Back in his office at Aurora's city headquarters, Vaughn displayed a tank of strawberry shortcake-flavored Euro Gas, one of a dizzying number of nitrous flavors and brands on the market. It was one of hundreds of products that filled three large plastic tubs -- the result of just a couple of weeks of confiscations made by Vaughn and Keyes across Aurora's 50 or so smoke and vape shops.

Vaughn noted that many of the seized products didn't comply with Colorado's labeling regulations. Several packages bore signs of legitimacy, emblazoned with QR codes that presumably would uncover the provenance of what was inside.

But when a reporter scanned a few codes, they opened dead websites.

Nearly 3 million Americans 12 and older used inhalants in the past year, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That covers nitrous oxide, but also poppers, household solvents and aerosols. The survey found that roughly 564,000 people ages 12 to 17 also used inhalants within the last year.

With numbers like that, University of Maryland law professor Kathi Hoke says Aurora is taking the right approach by targeting the retail outlets, rather than the user.

"Cut it off at the head, at the retail level," said Hoke, who is a public health law expert.

Aurora, she said, has good legal standing to ban these gray-market products. While some have legitimate uses, the way in which they are presented, marketed and sold is a big part of the calculus.

In the case of nitrous oxide dispensers, which are often paired at vape and smoke shops with balloons for facilitated inhalation, the argument that they are aimed at the whipped cream-loving home gastronomist may strain credulity.

"This is not where a chef acquires their chef things," Hoke said. "It's totally fair for the city to consider context."

In Denver, where the recent warning about psilocybin-laced edibles was issued, Department of Excise and Licenses spokesman Eric Escudero said the city was "growing concerned" about what was being found at certain businesses.

But for now, Escudero said, the city hasn't impose a blanket ban on nitrous oxide tanks, as an example. He told The Post that sales of the dispensers "under some circumstances may be a violation of law, and some circumstances not."

"If any illegal sales take place at a store with a liquor, retail tobacco or any other type of business license in Denver, that business is subject to enforcement action by the city, which can include license suspension, revocation and fines," he said.

Grier Bailey, the executive director of the Colorado Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association and the Convenience Store Association, has condemned municipal bans on flavored tobacco as an attack on retail outlets and an infringement on the rights of adults to use legal products.

But when it comes to products that aren't legal -- or exist in a legal gray zone -- the story is different, he said.

"What I would gently remind store owners, especially new folks in the retail space and folks who come from places and countries without strong consumer safeguards, is that regulations exist for a reason," Bailey said. "And while new markets and new products can be innovative and profitable, regulation provides tacit protection, labels and consumer transparency."

If Aurora's measure passes on Monday, it will go into effect in early September.

Vaughn said his staff of four will carry out inspections. While it's a small crew, Vaughn said that after being visited by a city enforcement officer, most businesses don't reoffend out of fear of losing their business licenses.

"There are those who will do the cat-and-mouse thing, but in my experience, business owners are interested in doing the right thing," he said. "The risk of losing the business entirely is a significant motivator in the calculus for an operator and how they operate."

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