On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 06:20:17 -0700, Samartha Deva
> wrote:

>"Stan J. Lefosi" wrote:

>> what did I do wrong?

>nothing - it happens....

>smells like a troll

>S.

You pot heads need to cut back. Paranoia is a symptom of excess
cannabis use (see below).

Normal people would not interpret that post as troll.

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© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...02/ixhome.html

Cannabis use causes 'hundreds of deaths a year', coroner warns
By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent

Britain's most senior coroner is warning that hundreds of young people
are dying in accidents caused by their prolonged use of cannabis.

Hamish Turner, the president of the Coroners' Society, said that the
drug, which is often portrayed as harmless, has increasingly been
behind deaths that have been recorded as accidents or suicides.

In the past year, he estimated that cannabis was a significant
contributory factor in about 10 per cent of the 100 cases that he had
dealt with in south Devon, where he works.

Conversations with his colleagues led him to believe that the scale of
the problem elsewhere in the country was equally bad. "Cannabis is as
dangerous as any other drug and people must understand that it kills,"
said Mr Turner.

"From my long experience I can say that it is a very dangerous
substance. Increasingly it is mentioned not only as the first drug
taken by people who overdose, but also in suicides and accidental
deaths.

"It is an awful waste of young lives. People are trying the drug at a
very young age. Many go on to harder drugs and I am dealing with more
and more heroin overdoses. People can also suffer severe consequences
from the cannabis alone, however.

"Bereaved parents say to me, 'We didn't realise how dangerous it was
until it was too late, if only we had done something'. It is
heartbreaking."

Recent examples of the dangers of the drug cited by Mr Turner include
the case of James Taylor, a 31-year-old, who was found hanged in his
Torquay flat. The inquest heard that he had started smoking cannabis
when he was about 15 and was a habitual user. The drug was blamed for
the depression and mental health problems that later plagued him and
which led to his death.

Mary Taylor, his mother, said that there was no doubt in her mind that
cannabis had killed her son. "The cannabis made him paranoid from the
word go. He went from a good-looking, artistic, talented chap to
someone who did not trust anyone, not even his sister, who he was very
close to.

"Because of the damage the drug did to him he became more isolated,
more lonely and more depressed. The loveliest boy was destroyed by
this drug. I would never have believed that James would have acted as
he did when he took his own life.

"People who insist that cannabis is harmless are talking rubbish. We
had years of hell when James was on cannabis, and that was all he was
taking. Now he is dead and our family life has been devastated."

Cannabis also contributed to the death of Dragan Radoslavjevic, 42,
from Paignton, Devon. He died earlier this year after using a power
tool to drill a hole in his head. An inquest in Torquay heard that he
suffered from depression and relied on drugs such as cannabis and
heroin.

Mr Turner said that stronger varieties of cannabis - up to 10 times
more potent than those used in the 1960s - were now common, leading to
physical and mental problems in young people living in rural areas as
well as in cities.

The drug robbed young people of their appetite for life, the coroner
warned, with regular and prolonged use leading to panic attacks,
paranoia, psychosis, racing heart, agitation, an increased risk of
heart attacks and strokes, and even a tendency to violence.

"Cannabis is a mind-altering drug which has ravaging effects on the
brain," he added.

In another case, Ralph Hamilton, 27, from Torquay, died when the car
he was driving hit a bus in Totnes. Witnesses reported that he "looked
almost comatose" as he drove directly into the front of the
open-topped bus. Blood tests showed that Mr Hamilton had been taking
cannabis and the inquest heard that he was a regular user.

Other coroners also expressed concern about cannabis. Michael Gwynne,
the coroner for Telford and Wrekin, said that he feared that deaths
would spiral if the Government decriminalised the drug. "There is
clearly some evidence that cannabis is a contributory factor in
drug-related traffic accident deaths but, because of the problems with
toxicology, we are unable to state its full impact," he said.

"What the Government should not do is become more tolerant of the
drug; that would involve setting legal limits, and risk cannabis
becoming a major cause of road traffic deaths."

Veronica Hamilton-Deely, the Brighton and Hove coroner, said that
national figures supplied by coroners' offices showed that illicit
drugs, particularly cannabis, were increasingly present in victims of
road traffic fatalities. These statistics showed that in 2000, 12 per
cent of the 3,400 people killed in road accidents showed traces of
cannabis: a sixfold increase on a decade earlier.

The dangers of cannabis were highlighted in research published last
month, which showed a sharp increase in drug-related deaths. According
to the European Centre for Addiction Studies at St George's Hospital
Medical School in London, in 2002, British coroners cited cannabis as
the major cause of death in 18 out of 853 drug-related deaths. The
drug was also implicated in a further 31 out of 1,579 deaths involving
a cocktail of drugs.

The biggest killers were heroin, which was the major cause of death in
712 cases, and cocaine, which was the principal factor in 147 deaths.
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