Cannabis is blamed as cause of man's death
By Richard Savill
(Filed: 20/01/2004)
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."
