My daughter died after taking up to 225 canisters of laughing gas a day
A devastated mum has spoken out after losing her daughter to a laughing gas poisoning.
The mother of a student who died after taking hundreds of laughing gas canisters a day has called for the drug to be banned.
Ellen Mercer, 24, from Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire, was rushed to hospital on February 9 last year, after she lost all feeling in her legs.
The business student had suffered a ‘sudden and unexpected cardiorespiratory collapse’, before she died in hospital, an inquest heard this week.
She had reportedly inhaled up to three large bottles of nitrous oxide.
Now her mum Sharon Cook, 54, has urged the government to crack down on the party drug.
She told the MailOnline she still checks her daughter’s messages every day – ‘thinking there will be a message from Ellen on WhatsApp or Messenger.’
She added: ‘I don’t think she realised just how harmful it is and if she had realised she wouldn’t have taken it.
‘I read somewhere that there had been 56 deaths in the last few years and they weren’t very well publicised, I had no idea and hadn’t heard about it.
‘Obviously it’s heartbreaking. [The government] needs to come down harder on it and they should definitely make it a Class A drug.
‘It is dangerous so it should be up there with heroin and cocaine. Class C is not strong enough in my book.’
Nitrous oxide, sometimes referred to as NOS, was made illegal last year with the Government making it a Class C drug.
The drug can be used in medical settings but those caught supplying it for unlawful reasons could face 14 years behind bars.
Ms Mercer’s post-mortem found she had died of bilateral pulmonary thromboembolism, deep vein thrombosis, and ‘long-term complications of nitrous oxide use’.
‘Large blood clots’ had formed in the young woman’s legs before moving to the arteries in her lungs which caused a ‘sudden cardiorespiratory collapse’.
In the months before her death Ms Mercer had required urgent medical care several times, including just days before on February 5 when she called the ambulance service saying she was ‘unable to get up’ and felt ‘pain in both legs and lower back.’
The student had initially told her boyfriend not to call an ambulance as she did ‘not want to lose the buzz’, it was reported.
Ms Cook was unaware her daughter had been taking the drug but recalled the last time she spoke to her, Ms Mercer had complained about losing the feeling in her legs.
She told MailOnline: ‘I had no idea at all [that Ellen was taking the drug]. I spoke to her a few days before she died when she said she could not walk.
‘And I said go to the hospital, you must go to the hospital and then I didn’t speak to her after that. That was the last time I spoke to her.
‘She did go to the hospital after that the following day and she called 999 but obviously it was too late.
‘I just wish she had gone sooner. If she had gone two weeks prior when she first lost the feeling in her legs she would probably still be with us now, so that is hard to think she didn’t have to die.’
The grieving mother, however, does not just place the blame of her daughter’s death on the Government’s laws on the drug.
Ms Cook blames the failures within the mental health services, who had discharged and failed to check up on her daughter despite warnings from her mother.
She believes Ellen had been using the drug – which cause people to feel relaxed, light headed or dizzy – as a form of coping mechanism after not getting the correct support from the health service.
‘I think had her mental health been more stable she would not have gone down this path with nitrous oxide. If she was in her right mind she would not have done it. So I think she was really failed by the mental health services, completely failed,’ she said.
Ms Cook now lives with her son and her younger daughter Daisy, who was just 11-years-old when her older sister died.
‘She misses her. It’s been really hard on Daisy,’ the mother, who used to work as a courier added.
The family are understandably still coming to terms with the sudden loss, but Ms Cook said they are coping as best they can.
‘We are coping. It was obviously harder in the first few months,’ she said. ‘It has gotten easier as time has gone on but I still expect to hear from her.
‘I still check my messages and think there will be a message from her on WhatsApp or Messenger. I can still hear her voice.’
In recent years, use of the drug has become an increasing problem, being one of the most abused substances with those aged 16-24.
Heavy, regular abuse, however, risks significant health risks including anaemia and in more severe cases, nerve damage or paralysis.
It has been identified as having potentially fatal consequences on the UK’s roads from incidents of drug driving.
Nitrous oxide, however, does have legitimate uses such as being used on maternity wards during labour. It is still legal for those purposes.
Licences are not needed to carry nitrous oxide, but users will be required to demonstrate they are not intending to consume it for psychoactive effects.
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