Colorado weighs ban on sodium nitrite, a poison used in suicides

At first, Bruce Brown thought the substance in his son’s room was a performance supplement, like the plastic bottles alongside it. He’d never heard of sodium nitrite, so he searched it on the internet.

But he accidentally typed in the wrong word, searching instead for sodium nitrate. Still, even the results for the wrong substance set off an alarm in his head. It didn’t seem like something that his son, Bennett, should be taking. So he texted him.

The next day, Bennett died by suicide at age 17. He’d ordered a highly concentrated amount of sodium nitrite, a salt used as a preservative on meats, from a sporting goods store out of state. It cost less than a movie ticket, and it arrived with two-day shipping.

“The store knew what he was likely using this product for,” Brown, a former prosecutor who lives in Clear Creek County, told Colorado legislators Thursday. “I sent an investigator there after he died, and what did the manager say? ‘Sure, we know people are killing themselves with this. Not our problem.’ ”

Bennett, who would’ve turned 19 this week, is one of at least 29 Coloradans who’ve died by suicide after ingesting sodium nitrite since 2018, according to state data. Hundreds more have died nationally after taking a poison that could be purchased on Amazon, in sporting goods stores and elsewhere on the internet. Reviews for the product on Amazon were filled with pleading warnings from grieving families, according to an attorney who later sued the company.

As lawmakers in other states and at the national level scrutinize the availability of the substance, Colorado may be on the verge of banning it in its most deadly form. On Thursday, after testimony from three families who’d lost loved ones to it, a bipartisan — and emotional — committee of state lawmakers unanimously advanced HB24-1081.

The bill would ban the sale of high-potency sodium nitrite — more than 10% pure — to Coloradans, except approved commercial businesses, in a bid to slow deaths in a state that regularly has one of the highest suicide rates in the country. The substance that Bennett ordered was 97% pure, his father said.

“It is incumbent on us to do what we can to save lives,” said Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who’s co-sponsoring the bill with Rep. Marc Catlin, a Montrose Republican. “And this bill will save lives.”

The bill, which also requires the use of warning labels on approved sales to highlight the substance’s lethality, is scheduled for its first of two full votes in the Colorado House on Tuesday. No group or person has registered to oppose it, according to lobbying data from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

Regulators and lawyers elsewhere previously have sought to limit the poison’s availability. Carrie Goldberg, a New York-based attorney, told lawmakers that she currently represents 12 families in five separate lawsuits filed against Amazon.

Two U.S. senators sponsored a bill in July to ban the sale of high-concentrate sodium nitrite, similar to Colorado’s approach, and federal lawmakers sought answers about sales of the substance from Amazon in 2022. Legislators in California and New York have both considered — and California passed — age-based bans on the poison, intending to limit its sales to younger people.

But Colorado data indicates it’s used by more than just teenagers: According to figures provided by the state Department of Public Health and Environment, 23 of the recent deaths here have been in residents who were 25 or older.

Amabile and Brown said they suspected more Coloradans — and more Americans — were dying of the poison than data suggests. The use of sodium nitrite in suicide is increasing thanks to online boosters, they said, but testing for it is still not universal. Brown said he’s spoken with grieving parents and families from across the world, including some linked to a Canadian man who was investigated for selling sodium nitrite kits to dozens of people.

Amabile first heard about the substance at a town hall, when Brown approached her and Sen. Dylan Roberts, who’s set to sponsor the bill in the state Senate. She called Catlin shortly after, not knowing that Catlin had also recently heard from a different constituent whose friend had lost a son to the poison.

Catlin said he wanted to intervene and limit sodium nitrite’s availability before its use became an “epidemic.” Amabile said she planned to bring a bill in the future to address websites that promoted death by sodium nitrite and suicide generally, dark corners of the internet that Brown said were run by “grim reapers.”