DailyMail: Cause of Death - Cannabis

[Dick Head]

It was on the BBC a few days back - not sure I've seen their report questioned - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-25968093

It's the BBC... Need I say more?

 

[midnight_rendezvous]

My late wife was the manager of a home for the mentally ill and a large proportion of her residents were psychotic due to the use of cannabis.
She would often say to me that these people that want to legalise it use should come and see the damage it causes.

With all due respect to your late wife cannabis doesn't cause mental illness but it can exasibate it. However it has shown to do many positive things; reduce cancerous tumours, relieve depression and anxiety and is generally found to be less harmful to the body that alcohol.

 

[drew]

Well the coroner was wrong then. The poor girl either had an underlying health problem that may have been triggered by cardiovascular changes caused by cannabis smoking, or the coroner just failed to identify what actually killed her and irresponsibly blamed the cannabis.

You still haven't read the article have you. The coroner reaches his verdict based on the medical evidence and it was a doctor that made the statement and the Coroner accepted that in his verdict. I take it you have a host of medical qualifications to underline your opinion of what caused her death!

With all due respect to your late wife cannabis doesn't cause mental illness but it can exasibate it. However it has shown to do many positive things; reduce cancerous tumours, relieve depression and anxiety and is generally found to be less harmful to the body that alcohol.

I was intrigued by your references to cancer so googled it. The only evidence appears to be in studies of mice!!! Hardly compelling. As for relieving depression and anxiety, are you referring to the after effects or is that just how you feel when under the influence. Also, do you have any links to scientific studies to support that.

 

[StonehamPark]

I don't really get it.

She died from a heart attack, believed to have been caused due to the levels of cannabis in her blood.
So how did she directly die from smoking cannabis?



Is it just me?

 

[midnight_rendezvous]

I was intrigued by your references to cancer so googled it. The only evidence appears to be in studies of mice!!! Hardly compelling. As for relieving depression and anxiety, are you referring to the after effects or is that just how you feel when under the influence. Also, do you have any links to scientific studies to support that.

The evidence/ research is out there it's part of the reason why you get prescribed medicinal marijuana in the states. Of course any evidence that evenly remotely suggests cannabis to have positive effects is highly scrutinised because of negative perception surrounding the drug. As for myself being under the influence I can't comment. I haven't touched the stuff for years.

 

[Billy the Fish]

I love how people try and use this as an example of it being dangerous!

In the last year more people have died as a result of playing football.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

Well the coroner was wrong then. The poor girl either had an underlying health problem that may have been triggered by cardiovascular changes caused by cannabis smoking, or the coroner just failed to identify what actually killed her and irresponsibly blamed the cannabis.

And you are better qualified than the coroner on the cause of death, how exactly?

When did you perform your post mortem and who did the toxicology analysis for you - and to really shut me up and prove you know best - scan these reports and test results and put them on here as hard factual evidence.

Oh, sorry, you were fishing .......

 

[Goldstone1976]

With all due respect to your late wife cannabis doesn't cause mental illness but it can exasibate it. However it has shown to do many positive things; reduce cancerous tumours, relieve depression and anxiety and is generally found to be less harmful to the body that alcohol.

The latest research is that it is uncertain whether cannabis use causes psychosis. Most researchers believe it does, but cannot provide sufficient proof, because there are nearly always multiple reasons why people develop psychosis. What there is no doubt about is that patients with psychosis are 6-8 times more likely to be cannabis users immediately before diagnosis than controls. Whether cannabis is causal or an indicator is where the debate is.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

My late wife was the manager of a home for the mentally ill and a large proportion of her residents were psychotic due to the use of cannabis.
She would often say to me that these people that want to legalise it use should come and see the damage it causes.

It's not that straight forward though. My Aunt suffers from MS and has done for 15 years - her children supply her with cannabis because it dulls the symptoms of the horrible condition. Other than relieving her of the pain etc it has not effected on her. She'd happily get it on the NHS but thanks to the close mindedness of drugs policy in this country she can't so her children decide to commit criminal acts.

 

[Questions]

Well if cannabis can kill you then I would have thought my mate who panicked and swallowed a full 8th many years ago just before going through customs on his way back from Amsterdam should surely have perished. I know he slept well that night though.
Amazing that this is the first recorded death by cannabis. You might have thought there would have been one before in the last 50 to 60 years in this country.

 

[Garage_Doors]

Well the coroner was wrong then. The poor girl either had an underlying health problem that may have been triggered by cardiovascular changes caused by cannabis smoking, or the coroner just failed to identify what actually killed her and irresponsibly blamed the cannabis.

I take it you smoke cannabis and don't want to die

 

[perseus]

I did not read it the Daily Mail way:

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/03march/Pages/fabrice-muamba-heart-stop-collapse.aspx


Can cannabis cause a change in heart disease? The pharmacist even warns about decongestant pills. If it does it will never be made legal in the UK.

With 12 deaths a week from under 35 years old from heart disease, it is surprising that the corrolation has not occurred before? It seems to be an anomaly rather than a scientific discovery.

 

[Questions]

Psychosis is too broad a term really to decide about cannabis having an effect on ones mental state. It ranges from mild feelings of negativity up to major delusional behaviour encompassing schizophrenia and severe bi-polar. Most people who struggle in these areas will try drink and drugs to help them. They will also at some stage of their lives eat a kebab, put margarine on their sandwhich and maybe in extreme cases eat liquorice. Whenever anyone gets close to telling the truth about certain drugs the right wing press and the Governments interfere.
I would rather listen to someone like David Nutt than people with an agenda in these drugs debates.

 

[Goldstone1976]

Psychosis is too broad a term really to decide about cannabis having an effect on ones mental state. It ranges from mild feelings of negativity up to major delusional behaviour encompassing schizophrenia and severe bi-polar.

Err, no. No, it doesn't.

Psychosis is clearly defined and is MUCH more severe than mild feelings of negativity. Here, for one example:

"Psychosis is a medical word used to describe mental health problems that stop the person from thinking clearly, telling the difference between reality and their imagination, and acting in a normal way.

The two main symptoms of psychosis are:

hallucinations – where a person hears, sees (and in some cases smells) things that are not really there; a common hallucination is when people hear voices in their head

delusions – where a person believes things that, when examined rationally, are obviously untrue; such as believing that your next door neighbour is secretly planning to kill you"

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/psychosis/pages/introduction.aspx

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

It is physically impossible to consume enough cannabis to overdose, that is a fact. So the girl did not die from "cannabis intoxication" - it is possible for any healthy human body to consume hundreds if not thousands as times as much as she did (and people do). She died from an underlying health problem, or something else, but she did not die from cannabis intoxication.

"Tests performed on mice have shown that the ratio of cannabinoids necessary for overdose to the amount necessary for intoxication is 40,000:1. For comparison's sake, that ratio for alcohol is generally between 4:1 and 10:1. "

"Hello, Earth, can you read me? This is Starship Captain Warlock, on the planet Freakout, broadcasting to you on the inter-electric galactic airwaves."

 

[Questions]

Err, no. No, it doesn't.

Psychosis is clearly defined and is MUCH more severe than mild feelings of negativity. Here, for one example:

"Psychosis is a medical word used to describe mental health problems that stop the person from thinking clearly, telling the difference between reality and their imagination, and acting in a normal way.

The two main symptoms of psychosis are:

hallucinations – where a person hears, sees (and in some cases smells) things that are not really there; a common hallucination is when people hear voices in their head

delusions – where a person believes things that, when examined rationally, are obviously untrue; such as believing that your next door neighbour is secretly planning to kill you"

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/psychosis/pages/introduction.aspx

Early stage psychosis does include negativity often followed by social withdrawal. Irritable behaviour and anxiety are there often before the condition worsens or is clinically diagnosed. I'm not disputing your facts other than the condition has a wide ranging spectrum and so it is difficult to assess cannabis's exacerbation of it.

 

[Goldstone1976]

Early stage psychosis does include negativity often followed by social withdrawal. Irritable behaviour and anxiety are there often before the condition worsens or is clinically diagnosed. I'm not disputing your facts other than the condition has a wide ranging spectrum and so it is difficult to assess cannabis's exacerbation of it.

Ok, it does seem that, perhaps with some disagreement over semantics, we're in agreement. Do you accept an assertion I made in a previous post in this thread that patients who have been clinically diagnosed as having had at least one true psychotic episode are 6-8 times more likely to have been recent cannabis users than controls? I readily concede that this fact doesn't mean that there is necessarily a causal link between cannabis use and later diagnosis as psychotic, even though the vast majority of researchers and medics who work in the field believe it does, at least in part.

 

[Hungry Joe]

Wow! Spot the junkies.

You really are a prize tit aren't you.

 

[dougdeep]

You really are a prize tit aren't you.

Another one.

 

[Hungry Joe]

Another one.

Grow up or shut up you moron.