> Why don’t recreational nitrous users mix in some oxygen like medical users do?

Because they don't know better. It's not like we teach "safe consumption" in schools, and so most (particularly young) consumers of all possible kinds of drugs end up with cargo-culted consumption methods. Yes, Erowid etc. exist, but you need to know about that as well.

The correct thing to do would be to have "drug ed" similar to sex ed, but we see with the latter already how fierce political opposition to fact-based education can be, and with drugs it's going to be even worse.

I get that, but for these pop-up shops selling to partygoers out of large tanks it seems like very little extra effort and expense for a dramatically improved user experience. Market forces alone should be enough to incentivize adding oxygen.

Next you're going to expect them to use gases that are sourced for human consumption. But this is a gray market. Nitrous isn't meant to be used this way; so a gas supplier won't want to sell the healthier alternative for fear of getting caught knowingly selling it as a drug.

Markets are not entirely efficient, or else there’d be no work to do

Because you can buy little canisters of N2O at the gas station, you can’t buy little canisters of O2 to go with them.

If recreational nitrous was legal, and could be openly sold without the false pretense of being used to charge whipped cream - then I don’t see why not. You can get weed consumables in all different ratios and configurations.

Many nitrous users actually do mix in oxygen, and some long term users have elaborate setups for filtering and precise gas mixing

You don’t know many drug users eh?

Also known as a [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question].

Are many recreational drug users responsible about what they put in their bodies? Yes. The long lived in particular.

Do some recreational drug users find it a point of pride about how recklessly indifferent they can be about what they put in their bodies? Also yes.

There is also definitely a (small) subset of recreational drug users which actively seek out the worst possible things they can do to their bodies. The drug world version of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugchasing].

I’m generally indifferent to recreational drug use, and have friends who are avidly in the first two categories. I’ve known people in the last, but found them too dangerous (and heartbreaking) to be around. Let’s not pretend they don’t exist.

Hypoxia is euphoric. It's part of the intended effect.

That’s nitrogen gas (molecular nitrogen) not nitrous oxide