Man dies trying to swallow marijuana

[VermontDem2004]

A 24-year-old Ponder man choked to death on a bag of marijuana he stuffed down his throat in an apparent attempt to hide it from Corinth police officers early Wednesday.

Officers said they had no idea Nickolas Sandoval was in possession of drugs when they stopped about 2:30 a.m. to help him fix a flat tire in the 5900 block of northbound Interstate 35E in Corinth, Cpl. Frank Lott said.

"It started out as a welfare concern. It looked like he was attempting to change his tire on his Ford Ranger," Lott said. "But then he started doing the entire choking, grabbing throat, kind of thing. ... Officers went from 'Oh, hey, here is someone with a flat tire,' to 'Hey, this guy is choking.' "

Officers noticed a plastic bag lodged in the man's throat, but it was too far down for them to extract.

"The ambulance arrived and they had to use some kind of medical tool," Lott said. "The officers had worked on him using the Heimlich until the EMS arrived and took over. EMS removed the lodged article, and he was taken to the hospital."

Sandoval was pronounced dead in the emergency room of Denton Regional Medical Center about 3:30 a.m., said Linda Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office. The cause of death has been ruled as "asphyxiation due to aspiration of plastic bag," she said.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/7307704.htm

[soupkitchen]

1. That is one sad sad story

[GOPisEvil]

We regret to inform you that your son is dead because he is an idiot.

The cops weren't even going to question him...how sad for his family.

[VermontDem2004]

4. He was probaly nervous

If you have a sack and cops are around you, you will probaly react. Trying to swallow the bag was his reaction.

[Occulus]

13. that should read

"we regret to inform you your son is collateral damage in the war on some drugs."

If pot were legal, this would never have happened. National drug policy killed this man.

[bearfan454]

2. Damn - take the probation payments.

Dying is worse.

[VermontDem2004]

3. The Bears

This lose was by far the most painfull loss this season. Our defense couldn't stop shit and our special teams were horrible. The Bears played lik the 6-4 team and the Broncos played like the 3-7 team.

[Caution]

5. Is that the first confirmed death where

marijuana was the sole cause (other than stupidity)?

[sexybomber]

7. marijuana wasn't the cause of death

it was him choking on the plastic bag it was in. Last I checked, it's really hard to die from marijuana alone. The LD50, according to the chart here, is 1270 mg/kg when taken orally (as in swallowing it). Assuming this guy was your typical 150 lbs. (68.2 kg), he would have had to swallow 86 grams to have a 50% chance of dying. That's a little over three ounces. Yeah, they said it was a "sizeable amount" in the article, but to the cops, a "sizeable amount" is anything over an eighth-ounce. The LD50 is over 24 times that amount.

He choked on the plastic bag. Plain and simple.

THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW DRUG LAWS KILL PEOPLE, NOT DRUGS THEMSELVES! If we didn't have such stupid laws prohibiting marijuana, this guy would still be alive today.

[brainshrub]

11. But would we want this guy alive?

Maybe he could be nominated for a Darwin Award.

[VermontDem2004]

12. I would want him alive

Anyone, who knows how I would've reacted in that situation. I can pretty much know what he was feeling, I've been stopped by cops before with a sack on me. I wanted to do anything to get rid of it, but luckily I didn't have to swallow it.

[Larry Gude]

14. Is that a reasonable position...?

"If we didn't have such stupid laws prohibiting marijuana, this guy would still be alive today."

What if he'd been drinking a 5th of Jack? Or transporting a stuffed bald eagle? "Man chokes on..."

This guy is the reason we have labels on the bottom of coffee cups that say "Contents may be HOT"; they'll read it...when it's full.

Now, we need another label: "DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SWALLOW DIMES BAGS/A NICKEL IS THE MOST WE COULD EVER GET LAB RATS TO SUCCESSFULLY SWALLOW"

Sorry. I'm old. Is there still such a thing, nickels and dimes?

[underpants]

6. Meeeeow

Supertroopers

[AntiCoup2K4]

8. If you must eat your weed, use brownies, not bags!!

Better yet, just decriminalize it already so people don't do stupid shit like this to avoid prison

[leftofthedial]

9. Hmm, maybe we could get Limpballs to swallow the Oxycontin bottle

Quick, someone send some cops to follow him home after his hateandignorance fest today!

[bif]

10. What a dope!

n/t