Cannabis is blamed as cause of man's death

A man of 36 is believed to have become the first person in Britain to die directly from cannabis poisoning.

Lee Maisey smoked six cannabis cigarettes a day for 11 years, an inquest heard. His death, which was registered as having been caused by cannabis toxicity, led to new warnings about the drug, which is due to be reclassified this month as a less dangerous one.

"This type of death is extremely rare," Prof John Henry, a toxicologist at Imperial College, London, said after the inquest at Haverfordwest, west Wales.

"I have not seen anything like this before. It corrects the argument that cannabis cannot kill anybody."

The inquest heard that Mr Maisey had complained of a headache on Aug 22 last year. Next morning he was found dead at the house he shared with a friend, Jeffrey Saunders, in Summerhill, Pembrokeshire.

Michael Howells, the Pembrokeshire coroner, said Mr Maisey was free from disease and had not drunk alcohol for at least 48 hours. Post-mortem tests showed a high level of cannabinoids in his blood.

He recorded a verdict of death by misadventure because Mr Maisey had died while taking part in an illegal activity. The death led to a warning about the changing strength of cannabis, which is to be reduced to a Class C drug on Jan 29.

Dr Philip Guy, a lecturer in addictions at the University of Hull, said: "Cannabis is not the nice hippy drug it used to be. It has been experimented with to produce stronger varieties."

Dr Guy said that death was more likely if users ate the drug rather than smoked it. "I would not be surprised if in this case the deceased had ingested a fatal amount of cannabis."

Last autumn police issued a warning that big consignments of strong cannabis were being smuggled in from Africa. On Jan 29, cannabis will be reclassified from a class B to a class C drug.

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said last night: "This highlights what we have been saying about the effects of cannabis all along. When will people wake up to the fact that cannabis can be a harmful drug?

"By reclassifying the drug David Blunkett has shown he has lost the war on drugs. In my eyes, it's nothing more than an admission of failure."

Tristan Millington-Drake, the chief executive of the Chemical Dependency Centre, a charity that provides treatment for people with drug problems, said: "We have always taken the view that cannabis is an addictive drug, unlike the pedlars who try to persuade us that it is harmless. The Government's decision to reclassify cannabis is a mistake."




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...0/ixportal.html

Ive eaten one too many brownies before and gone off the deep end, everything just kept spinning for like an hour then it went away, but I could definitely see an ingested overdose of marijauna causing the bloodflow to the brain to cease, of course this could be said with any substance that lowers or raises your blood pressure, and the fact that this is the first reported death from marijauna USE (not selling) as in comparison to caffeine and nicotine fatal overdoses (some forty or fifty per year) just proves that marijauna is relatively safe, and that most substances found in nature, can be fatal if used improperly.

Its more than likely this guy had a congenital heart defect, and since cannibus can make your heart race it probably fucked him over... while it did technically act as the catalyst for his death i doubt it was toxicity that killed him and more of a heart defect.

I was told once that "Weed" is one of the most difficult drugs to kill yourself with...and I guess you guys helped prove that point...and caffeine is killing people o_O

Save me imus..save me..

Weed is about as safe as tobacco. That said, what I don't like about marijuana is that it makes people lazy and stupid if they smoke too much of it.

You can kill yourself with anything if you pump enough of it into your system

Not good ole H2O

my dad got water poisoning.

Tabacco does not make you lazy, nor does weed make me lazy. Not saying that I myself am one, but those who are functional smokers will tell you the same.

I am far from lazy.

If you drink too much water your stomach will become too full and "explode", or rather develop some form of holes on it or at least become incapable of working correctly.

This will in turn cause stomach acid to fill your innards and slowly burn you from within.

It's why people who have eating/drinking disorders wherein they can't stop need to have someone help them by keeping things locked and only a friend/relative/lover can give them food/water.

Y'know, mustard is actually a poison. That's why mustard squeeze bottles have narrower mouths than ketchup bottles. If you ingest too much mustard, you can get violently sick. I don't know about death per se, though.


At any rate, legalize the stuff.

Untrue. It is possible, though unlikely, to overhydrate the body by ingesting too much water. However, we're talking about the ingestion of gallons over the course of a day...

What, mustard?

I don't know why but I thought that was freaking hilarious.

Yeah, occasionally people are strangely affected by my dry wit.

And your common household 'lettuce' is a hallucinogen, but it isn't illegal to grow in your own garden... ?

Or is this because the 'masses' in general, are to 'ignorant' to information like this, and hence.. no need for apparent legalistation against lettuce growing?

Actually, to be technically correct, most poisions in small quantity's, contain hallucinogenic properties.

eh?

actually, according to the propaganda and medical reports.. weed is safer than tobacco.. Ciggs cause cancer and such.. weed doesn't..

Yet its a basic fact that if you spend too much time inhaling gasses other than oxygen, you lose brain cells due to oxygen deprivation...