- Adam Hunt, 18, died after taking one gram of drug Alpha Methyltryptamine
- Teenager bought the substance online after researching 'legal highs'
- Police expressed concern people think drugs are safe if considered legal
A coroner has warned of the dangers of so-called 'legal highs' after a teenager died from taking a drug he ordered online marked 'not for human consumption'. Adam Hunt, 18, died on August 18 this year after taking the psychoactive substance AMT at his home in Southampton, Hampshire, after purchasing it from a website. An inquest heard how the keen football fan had told a friend he planned to take the drug, which he believed had the same effects as ecstasy, but died four days later.
He told his friend that he had bought two grams of the substance, as well as etizolam, though there was no trace of the second drug in his system. Adam's mother, Bernadette Fagan, returned home from work to hear her son calling for help from his bedroom. 'He was sweating and shaking. She immediately phoned for help and ambulance staff arrived a short while later and took Adam to hospital,' the inquest was told. The teenager died four days later at Southampton General Hospital after being put in a medically-induced coma.
The inquest heard police discovered Adam had researched AMT and legal highs on the internet after his computer was seized. Packets containing the drugs were also found, with each bearing a 'not for human consumption' warning. Pathologist Dr Brian Green said a post mortem found he had died of multiple organ failure caused by taking almost 1g of the drug, Alpha Methyltryptamine. He said: 'One of the problems of buying medicines from unregulated manufacturers is the individual awareness of the concentration of the substance in the drug provided may bear no resemblance to the actual concentration, that puts an even greater risk in the ingestion of substances that are unregulated.'
