It may be no laughing matter for Whip-It fans and Phish tour participants, as Supervisor Danny Sauter wants to ban the sale of nitrous oxide in San Francisco, in SF’s latest nanny-state hippycrackdown.

Of all of the drugs causing social ills in San Francisco, you would probably have to put nitrous oxide, aka Whip-Its or laughing gas, at the bottom of that list. Fentanyl killed nearly 750 San Franciscans last year, nitrous oxide killed precisely zero.

Oh sure, there were a couple of wacky incidents where a guy got busted with 100 tanks of nitrous outside the Dead & Company show, and where Bob Lee murder  trial character Khazar Momeni was allegedly huffing Whip-Its in her car and got charged with a DUI hit-and-run. But these occurrences were mostly just a source of giggles, and were not really tragic.

Yet the SF Board of Supervisors may have another schoolmarm episode like that attempted 2010 Happy Meal ban that brought national mockery onto our city. At Tuesday’s SF Board of Supervisors meeting, District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter proposed a complete ban on the sale of nitrous oxide in San Francisco.    

“I am introducing a drafting request to prohibit the sale of nitrous oxide,” Sauter declared at Tuesday's board meeting. “The recreational use of nitrous oxide, often referred to as laughing gas or Whip-Its, has been exploding in popularity in San Francisco, and across the US.”

Sauter does have a point that nitrous-huffing is on the rise, though public health researchers concede that “deaths have remained fairly small compared to other dangerous substances.”

But a number of other California municipalities are jumping on the nitrous-banning bandwagon. San Mateo County has banned the retail sale of Whip-Its and other forms of nitrous, as has Santa Cruz County and the City of San Jose.

Sauter also complained that "nitrous oxide canisters create other problems, too. A San Francisco Standard article last year noted widespread reports of canisters being found littered on streets, sidewalks, and parks.”

I live right off Mission Street, and this is something I have not personally ever seen. But on a nearly everyday basis, I see discarded marijuana joints on the sidewalk, which any kid could just pick up and take a hit from.

State law already prohibits recreational nitrous use, but smoke shops and head shops use the implausible technicality that they’re selling “cream canisters” for making whipped cream products. And yes, there is probably a surge in popularity of nitrous-huffing since the new larger canisters started appearing in head shops, replacing the legacy "cracker" model.

But banning nitrous oxide still feels like a solution in search of a problem, in a city like San Francisco that already has an endless supply of drug problems.

Related: Of Course the SFPD Busted a Guy Outside Dead & Company Show With 100 Nitrous Oxide Tanks [SFist]

Image: Glastonbury Festival, 2015. Group of girls all dressed up inhaling balloons of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, (which gives an instant high) in the camping grounds before the big night out. Technically laughing gas falls into a legal grey area, coming under the ‘legal high' bracket as it is used by some dentists as an anaesthetic. Although it is not illegal to possess and inhale the substance, it is illegal to supply it to anyone under the age of 18. In an attempt to tackle legal highs, the gover (Photo by Barry Lewis/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)