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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.
See also
External links
- Her best friend talks to the Guardian 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.
"Leah Betts"