LaPlace coroner claims Marijuana overdose caused death

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St. John the Baptist Parish Coroner Christy Montegut said last week that toxicology results for a 39-year-old LaPlace woman who died in February showed that she was killed by an excess amount of THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana.

“It looked like it was all THC because her autopsy showed no physical disease or afflictions that were the cause of death. There was nothing else identified in the toxicology — no other drugs, no alcohol,” Montegut said. “There was nothing else.”

Montegut, who has served as the St. John coroner since 1988, believes this could be an index case in medicine, perhaps the first death on record solely as a result of THC exposure.

Some drug researchers and experts are skeptical.

Keith Humphreys, a former senior policy adviser at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said that with the vast amounts of marijuana consumed in the U.S. every year, it's hard to imagine that more overdose deaths wouldn't be occurring if THC was toxic at consumable levels.

“We know from really good survey data that Americans use cannabis products billions of times a year, collectively. Not millions of times, but billions of times a year,” said Humphreys. “So, that means that if the risk of death was one in a million, we would have a couple thousand cannabis overdose deaths a year.”

However, a bill making its way through the Legislature looks to make getting the marijuana a little easier. Montegut suggested lawmakers might want to think twice about moving that bill forward, saying, “If you’ve got a 30-day supply of THC in there with an inhaler, you can just keep puffing away.”

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