Can You Overdose on Weed?
You probably can’t blaze yourself to death, but that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as a marijuana overdose
By Marion Renault
Last month, a coroner in Louisiana claimed to have recorded the first death exclusively caused by weed.
Toxicology results for a woman who died in February suggested she was killed by an excess amount of THC, the primary psychoactive component of weed, the coroner, Christy Montegut, told the New Orleans Advocate. Montegut failed to find anything else — drugs, alcohol, disease — that could have attributed to her death.
Stories about a supposed first-ever lethal marijuana overdose occasionally crop up. They’re usually followed by rebuttals that no, as far as we know it’s not possible to die from ingesting too much THC at one time — and dying from another cause while having THC in your system is not quite the same thing.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a government agency that handles drug use and addiction, there has yet to be an adult death attributable solely to marijuana. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also states that while using too much marijuana can cause extreme confusion, emotional distress, increased blood pressure, heart rate, severe nausea, or…
