A man aged 36 is believed to have become the first person in Britain to die directly from cannabis poisoning.

Lee Maisey smoked six cannabis cigarettes a day for 11 years, an inquest heard. His death, registered as having been caused by cannabis toxicity, led to new warnings about the drug, which is due to be reclassified this month as less dangerous.

“This type of death is extremely rare,” Professor John Henry, a toxicologist at Imperial College, London, said after the inquest at Haverfordwest, west Wales. “I have not seen anything like this before.”

A South Korean man has died after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks.

Peter Burkowski had not been drinking when he arrived at Friar Tuck's Game Room in Calumet City, Illinois. He hadn't been using drugs either. According to the owner of Friar Tuck's, Peter and a friend walked in about 8:30 p.m. Saturday, April 3, and went straight to the games. Peter was eighteen, likeable, and apparently healthy. An “A” student, he had plans to become a doctor someday. Peter was also good with the games. In fifteen minutes of play, he wrote his initials at least twice in the “Top Ten” on the Berzerk screen. Then, tired of that game, he turned, took about four steps, dropped his quarter into a second machine, and collapsed. By 9 p.m. Peter was dead. The cause: heart attack.

Earlier this year, a flock of gulls feasting on some uneaten Valentine's Day chocolate dumped at a local landfill fell dead from the skies. The cause of death, announced this week by the provincial agriculture office in Abbotsford, B.C., was “chocolate toxicity.”

The problem, according to veterinary experts, is that eating a speck of chocolate leads a dog to crave more. It can mean that your dog will jump at a opportunity to get any type of chocolate, not knowing that certain chocolates are more lethal than other types. Larger amounts of chocolate, particularly of the most toxic type, can bring about epileptic seizures in some dogs, and in all dogs, can kill.

A key aspect of Dutch drug policy is the notion of market separation. By classifying drugs according to the risks posed and then pursuing policies that serve to isolate each market, it is felt that users of soft drugs are less likely to come into contact with users of hard drugs. Thus, the theory goes, users of soft drugs are less likely to try hard drugs. Possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use has been decriminalized in the Netherlands.

Separating the markets by allowing people to purchase soft drugs in a setting where they are not exposed to the criminal subculture surrounding hard drugs is intended to create a social barrier that prevents people experimenting with drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, drugs deemed an “unacceptable risk.” Decriminalization of the possession of soft drugs for personal use and the toleration of sales in controlled circumstances has not resulted in a worryingly high level of consumption among young people. The extent and nature of the use of soft drugs does not differ from the pattern in other Western countries. As for hard drugs, the number of addicts in the Netherlands is low compared with the rest of Europe and considerably lower than that in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Dutch rates of drug use are lower than U.S. rates in every category.