Leah Betts
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A photograph of Leah Betts in a coma, used in an anti-drug campaign. |
Leah Betts (
November 11,
1977 -
November 16,
1995) was a schoolgirl from
Latchingdon in
Essex,
United Kingdom. She is notable for the extensive media coverage that followed her death several days after her 18th birthday, on
November 11, during which she took an
Ecstasy tablet, then collapsed four hours later into a
coma, from which she did not recover.
The press was quick to report that Leah's death was an obvious example of the dangers of
illegal drugs in general, and ecstasy in particular. Leah was from a quite ordinary family, with her father a policeman and her mother a nurse. That she was so ordinary may have contributed to the sense of shock around the country. Not long afterwards, a major advertising campaign used (with permission of the family) the image of Leah Betts on her deathbed, and the caption
Sorted: Just one ecstasy tablet killed Leah Betts. Her father, Paul, became a public campaigner against drug abuse.
However an official inquest determined that her death was not directly due to ecstasy consumption, but rather the large quantity of
water she had consumed, apparently in observation of an advisory warning commonly given to
ravers to drink water to avoid
dehydration. Betts had consumed about 7 litres (1.85 gal.) in less than 90 minutes, resulting in
water intoxication and
hyponatremia (a dilution of the blood, disrupting
sodium levels), which in turn led to serious swelling of the brain (
cerebral edema), irreparably damaging it.
It also arose later, though much less publicised, that the ecstasy tablet which Leah took that night was not her first. The media onslaught after her death focused heavily on the putative fact that it was the first time she had taken the drug; this was what shocked the British public most.
*
Rachel Whitear*
Anna Wood*
Recreational drug use *
War on drugs*
Her best friend talks to the Observer 10 years on*
TheDEA.org: Hyponatremia. An account of Leah Bett's death with some discussion of the medical mechanisms of hyponatremia-induced brain death.
