Death by... um... cannabis?

[DoingKermit]

I was watching the news this morning and saw a story regarding "the first death by cannabis in the UK". I thought it was a joke! The media love jumping on a story like this, as it reassures all the people who are against this "horrible drug" that it is indeed just that.

How many people die from alcohol every week in the UK? or legal drugs in general?

I was hoping the UK would follow America's lead on the whole legalisation of the drug, but I now see how far we really are from that happening.

What do you guys think?

Article: Mother thought to be first woman in Britain to die from cannabis poisoning

 

[Elpo]

I don't know it seems a very strange story. One that will probably be dismissed in a few months. In the meanwhile the message is out unfortunately.

 

[Cosmic Spore]

Cannabis.zip
Harm.zip
CS.pdf
Well, before a couple months ago, I would've completely dismissed it, as I thought Cannabis could not be harmful (much less fatal). However, I have seen some evidence that arterial disease, heart attack & stroke can sometimes be associated with Cannabis usage; Harm.zip

[Likely more rare than alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, or sugar morbidity & mortality].
Marijuana vs Alcohol: Fox News Can't Tell Which More Dangerous?

I still love Cannabis & believe it is overwhelmingly beneficial. It's also safer than many legal drugs, tobacco products kill between 1,000 & 1,100 Americans daily. Most of the negative propaganda associated with Cannabis does not withstand scrutiny.

Update - Just a few days after this post:​

Too much sugar will kill your heart (arterial disease mortality)

Eating too much added sugar may be killing you

Excess sugar consumption from soda, desserts leads to higher rates of cardiovascular death

 

[Global]

[In the news station]: "We found one! We found one!" *confetti drops*

 

[Red Eclipse]

Because having a joint within arms reach and dying of natural causes must mean cannabis is the culprit, right?

:roll: :!:

 

[DoingKermit]

[In the news station]: "We found one! We found one!" *confetti drops*

Exactly! They all spunk in their pants due to the fact there is a story that points towards cannabis being bad for you... and possibly fatal.

Scare tactics at it's finest.

 

[Kobranek]

This is rediculous that the UK media is sensationalizing this beautiful lady's death for the sake of furthering the prohibitionists' agenda.

I seriously want to call out the coroner who came to the conclusion that she died from cannabis toxicity. He clearly has no concept of the LD 50 of thc and therefore should be removed from his position for his innaccurate final conclusion.

Its not like she has uncovered some kind of way to break the veil of reality with a joints worth of even the strongest strains of cannabis to go and never come back, if so what strain was she smoking?

 

[ganjaman]

This was in the news in Germany:

http://www.medicinalgenomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Sudden-unexpected-death-under-acute-influence-of-cannabis.pdf

 

[Ufostrahlen]

This was in the news in Germany:

http://www.medicinalgenomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Sudden-unexpected-death-under-acute-influence-of-cannabis.pdf

Medicinal Genomics puts it into perspective on Facebook:

This is a case to pay attention to. I suspect these folks had genetic predispositions to THC tachycardia. Keep in mind 1000s die from aspirin every year but we will learn from this like no other ADR.

Ill post it in a bit. Its not a great paper. Full of holes.

1)As you folks mentioned,the list of other drugs screened for is not given although one patient is positive for nicotine and caffeine. How they come to the conclusion that THC caused the cardiac death as opposed to caffeine is not given? They reference cardiac ischemia without referencing mechoulams work which showcases protection from hypoxic cardiac ischemia.

2)the sequencing they performed to detect potential genetic predispositions was minimal by modern standards and very poorly described. This is the red herring in the paper. To link this to cannabis while performing a blatantly narrow genetic screen is absurd.

In summary, 2 people died who had THC in their blood stream. Meanwhile thousands die with water in their blood stream.

Btw, the doctor who published the paper is an official medicolegal expert, who gets his money from the German state (or to be more precise: from the state financed/controlled medical university e.g. you'll find a retired Senior Public Prosecutor in the institutes’s team, the board of directors of the clinical center has close links the the Government, etc.)

The federal government is panicked about marijuana legalization. They cannot stand the idea of losing an effective method for destroying and controlling people with such easy-to-enforce regulations. Being arrested destroys your autonomy and essentially makes you a ward or slave to the state for the duration of your sentence and beyond. The agencies that benefit from and exist because of marijuana prohibition are pouring millions and millions of dollars into research desperately seeking some marijuana-related horror that will reverse the tsunami for legalization. Pathetic, researchstitutes take the money and work to design studies that will yield some terrible data about cannabis, but they cannot honestly accomplish that so the studies are done with powerful synthetic cannabinoids that are injected into rats or mice and then the results are reported as if they correspond to humans smoking natural marijuana. Another scam these sell-outs and ideologues pull is to seek an unusual illness and determine that the patient has smoked marijuana and then report it as the cause of the ailment without ANY correlating evidence. There was such a report in the scientific literature trying to suggest that smoking marijuana caused "vanishing lung disease" and I forwarded it to a pulmonary researcher who essentially told me it is bullshit and something of a disgrace that it was published. Be aware of how desperate the drug war profiteers in law enforcement and the treatment industry are to keep their ill-gotten profits rolling in. Soon they will need to seek honest work.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10202360299476592&id=134156373331108

 

[ganjaman]

^ That's exactly what i thought!
Thank you Ufostrahlen!

 

[Ufostrahlen]

^ That's exactly what i thought!
Thank you Ufostrahlen!

You're welcome. I hope more experts will comment on the paper.

 

[ganjaman]

Hmmmm... they also showed it on TV today.

 

[Parshvik Chintan]

"woman happens to be stoned while having a cardiac arrest"

i am unconvinced cannabis is at fault.

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

Anyone who has smoked overlarge quantities of cannabis knows that it can shoot your heartrate through the roof. Not always, of course, but I could imagine someone who was already suffering from a weak heart, who happened to smoke too much of cannabis that was too strong might, on a bad day, suffer from cardiac failure.

Of course, that's not a common set of circumstances, but it would still technically be a death from cannabis.

Blessings
~ND

 

[Orion]

Load of rubbish. Never a recorded death in history and as soon as people start legalizing it this happens ? Yeah right. Prove the THC or CBD caused a heart attack, someone... anyone... no? Okay.

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

Load of rubbish. Never a recorded death in history and as soon as people start legalizing it this happens ? Yeah right. Prove the THC or CBD caused a heart attack, someone... anyone... no? Okay.

Give this a read. It's not 'proof' by any stretch of the imagination, but it is interesting none-the-less.

...The risk of myocardial infarction onset was elevated 4.8 times over baseline (95% confidence interval, 2.4 to 9.5) in the 60 minutes after marijuana use. The elevated risk rapidly decreased thereafter.

Conclusions—Smoking marijuana is a rare trigger of acute myocardial infarction. Understanding the mechanism through which marijuana causes infarction may provide insight into the triggering of myocardial infarction by this and other, more common stressors.

I refuse to believe that marijuana is some kind of utterly harmless psychoactive that cannot possibly hurt anyone, in any circumstances. No such thing exists: sugar, water, even sunlight can all be damaging to certain, really unlucky people. I can even pull up an Erowid report where freebase DMT triggered a heart attack in a sensitive user.

Is cannabis safe? Yes. Is it one the safest recreational psychoactives around? Yes. Does that mean that some poor person, who made a bad choice and had bad genes could never get hurt by it? No. Definitely not.

Blessings
~ND

 

[Parshvik Chintan]

I could imagine someone who was already suffering from a weak heart, who happened to smoke too much of cannabis that was too strong might, on a bad day, suffer from cardiac failure.

they checked her vitals and they were fine.

no evidence she had a "weak" heart.

none at all.

plus i really question how much the heart-rate is affected. granted many new stoners tend to freak-out and think they are heart-attacking, my heart rate seems unaffected. actually when i measured sober and then stoned in the same conditions, my heart-rate was lower when stoned.

granted my one study on my self is by no means scientific, but it makes me wonder how much the heart-rate is actually affected (i can't think its much more than a brisk walk to a mailbox and back)

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

I get pretty intense tachycardia in the first 10-15 minutes of smoking, and while I don't do it often, I'm certainly no cannabis neophyte, so I imagine it's variable person-to-person.

 

[Ufostrahlen]

I think risk assessment and proper science is due. I mean, if there is a chance that THC can cause heart failure in people let's investigate this issue properly. But please consider moderation, nobody puts caffeine into Schedule I, because some people die of it:

Fatal caffeine intoxication: a series of eight cases from 1999 to 2009 - PubMed

Caffeine, 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine, is the most widely consumed legal stimulant. The most potent form is over the counter oral tablets. The estimated average daily adult caffeine consumption is 300 mg. Rarely, serious toxicities such as seizure and cardiac arrhythmias have caused death. Caffeine...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Death of a young man after overuse of energy drink - PubMed

A 28-year-old-man admitted to emergency department with ventricular tachycardia. Patient had drunk 3 cans of 250-mL energy drink 5 hours before the basketball match; he had palpitation and nausea before the match. After 30 minutes of the match, during the break, patient lost his consciousness...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Fatal caffeine overdose: a case report and review of literature - PubMed

Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant that is consumed by large numbers of people on a routine basis, usually in the form of coffee or tea. However, if consumed in high doses, this xanthine alkaloid is profoundly toxic and can result in death. Increasingly being sold as a dietary...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

And if you experience tachycardia from THC consumption, just stay away from it. Your body is quite clever, it sends you signals when it doesn't like a substance.

Edit: the paper is so LOL

A young soldier who had vainly tried to commit suicide by smoking cannabis
spent 4 days in coma and claimed afterwards that others had used this method effectively
before

Oh yeah, let's cite this case to substantiate our claims. :thumb_dow :!:

Toxicological examinations proved the acute influence of cannabis [..]
General unknown screening for other common drugs was negative with the exception
of nicotine and caffeine levels

[..]

We concluded that death occurred due to acute global cardiac failure under the acute influence of cannabis.

[..]

After exclusion of other causes of death we assume that the young men died from
cardiovascular complications evoked by smoking cannabis.

[..]

We assume the deaths of these two young men occurred due to arrhythmias evoked by smoking cannabis; however this assumption does not rule out the presence of predisposing cardiovascular factors.

So there's THC, nicotine and caffeine in the blood of a dead person. Therefore the cause of the cardiac failure must be ... the THC!

And "General unknown screening for other common drugs" means nothing, have they screened the weed or blood for 5F-PB-22, 5-F-AKB48 or other novel synthetic cannabinoids? The paper doesn't tell. FYI, 5F-PB-22 & 5-F-AKB48 are readily available in Germany via mail order to lace the weed. I'm not so sure however if drug screens can detect these novel substances.

 

[Entheogenerator]

And "General unknown screening for other common drugs" means nothing, have they screened the weed or blood for 5F-PB-22, 5-F-AKB48 or other novel synthetic cannabinoids? The paper doesn't tell. FYI, 5F-PB-22 & 5-F-AKB48 are readily available in Germany via mail order to lace the weed. I'm not so sure however if drug screens can detect these novel substances.

Drug screens can detect even the most novel of synthetic cannabinoids, but it is extremely rare that they do unless they are specifically looking for them.