The following are excerpts from an email from my friend sent to my personal email ... the message was very long ... anywhere you see the dot, dot, dot I have taken some out and anywhere you see parenthesis (like this) is where I added words to keep the

Latest Drug in Middle School - 'Dusting' ...I am a Police Officer ...I also have a police K-9 (dog) named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty... 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...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 ...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 ...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... (one night soon after) I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle (the son) goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy (the wife) 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 hand. 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. Its 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 he died. Kyle had showed it to his best friend and told him it was cool and couldn't hurt you. It's just compressed air... Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. It's 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 and 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. ITS 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. (like with paints, glues and other chemicals) The kids don't believe its huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why its more accepted (socially). 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. I thought we were safe because of Thor (the drug sniffing dog). I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them...We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs... It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it....

Wow .... I have a heavy heart reading this ... the message goes on to describe how each member of their family has been affected by young Kyle's death and also how distraught the entire family has become ... the father who wrote this says at the end that he believes Kyle is in Heaven and that he himself has woken up in Hell ....