Another day, another Tottenham Hotspur player getting in trouble for something that happened off of the football pitch. This time it’s Yves Bissouma, who has gotten himself into hot water after inexplicably posted a video of himself on social media huffing nitrous oxide at a club. The incident is all detailed in The S-n, to which I will not link the article because screw that rag of a newspaper, but the club is aware of the incident, and Bissouma has publicly apologized for a “severe lack of judgment.” Tottenham has said the matter will be dealt with internally.
Yeah, no crap it was.
| Yves Bissouma filmed himself inhaling laughing gas and uploaded it to his Snapchat.
Possession of laughing gas with intent to get high was made illegal last year.
Bissouma apologised for these actions last night, saying he had used a “severe lack of judgement” in doing what… pic.twitter.com/SiAw9eVwGB
— The Spurs Express (@TheSpursExpress) August 11, 2024
Let’s get a couple of things out of the way. First, huffing nitrous for recreational use is a crime in the UK, at least as of last November. It’s pretty popular among teens and young adults age 16-24, especially in the party scene, which prompted concerns of an “epidemic” of nitrous use. There very much are dangers associated with it, including suffocation and spinal cord damage, and statistics have shown at least one death associated to huffing “hippy crack” in the UK per year (which doesn’t seem like a lot, but tell that to the loved ones of the person who died). According to the BBC, first-time offenders can expect a warning, community service, or a fine, with repeat offenders facing up to two years in prison.
That said, my understanding is that death and injury from nitrous use requires constant and repeated use over a long period of time, it’s viewed as mostly harmless when used sporadically, and the nitrous ban mostly came about due to a prolonged campaign of moral panic in the UK about “children” getting ahold of their parents’ whipped cream dispensers. Nitrous oxide is also regularly given (properly) to pregnant women in the UK to help with pain during childbirth, and as a pain reliever during dental procedures. Bissouma is hardly the first Tottenham-connected footballer to get in trouble for huffing nitrous — Kyle Walker notably got in trouble for “embarrassing the England team” when he was photographed with a balloon of the stuff in 2013, and Dele got flak in the papers just before the ban last year for being photographed with a balloon in his mouth surrounded by nitrous canisters.
Now look — I want to be clear here. I don’t condone drug use, and Yves Bissouma is an idiot for not only allowing himself to be videoed partaking in nitrous in a club, but also posting it on social media. That’s a stupid, stupid thing to do and he should absolutely know better. And yes, as a professional footballer it’s also a dumb idea to be in a situation where he’s taking (technically) illegal drugs — it’s not only a bad look, it’s also not the greatest thing to be doing as an athlete who relies on his body for peak performance.
But personally, I just can’t be bothered to get all that outraged by this. Nitrous oxide can be abused, but so can alcohol, something also used (often to excess) by many people including professional athletes. Yves is a grown-ass adult who can make his own decisions, and he’ll live with the consequences of his actions. In this case, the actions resulted in some moderate embarrassment, a sincere apology to the club, and likely a hefty fine. He also didn’t throw a bottle into a crowd of fans after a Copa America match, or (possibly) participate in a racist song on a team bus, which is something that has also happened to Tottenham Hotspur players this summer, so this doesn’t feel that significant to me in the grand scheme of things
I know I’m someone who has taken strong moral stances against Spurs players for their actions in the past, so maybe this makes me hypocritical. So be it if that’s what you want to think, but in this case I can’t bring myself to get worked up about it. This is much MUCH less bad than, say, Hugo Lloris driving drunk a few years ago, for example. Bissouma is a big ol’ dummy and shouldn’t have allowed himself to be in this situation, but it’s also not like he was doing lines of coke — this doesn’t feel to me much different than being caught with a joint at a party, something that should probably result in an apology and a promise not to do it again, but not anything to cancel him over.
If we’re going to get mad at Yves Bissouma, we should be mad at him for being dumb enough to think that posting a video of himself on social media huffing a now-illegal substance was a fun and clever idea. It wasn’t. It was stupid. He’ll get a slap on the wrist, and like with Walker and Dele everyone will probably forget about this in a couple of weeks. Next time, Yves? Stay at home and take an edible.
