Stephen Breheny hanged himself using a tie attached to a clothes rail in his bedroom.
The 22-year-old had used cannabis since his late teens and smoked it every day in the two weeks before his death, an inquest was told.
His parents, Stephen and Marian, of Unsworth, Bury, believe his depression was induced by the drug, which was downgraded by former Home Secretary David Blunkett from Class B to Class C, in line with steroids and some prescription anti-depressants.
Now, backed by a mental health charity, they are calling for more to be done to investigate links between cannabis use and mental illnesses.
Their plea follows a report published earlier this month that revealed prolonged cannabis use doubled the risk of developing mental illnesses.
The study prompted the Department of Health to announce a major review of all academic and clinical studies linking cannabis use to mental health problems.
Marian said that Stephen had never been in trouble with the police and was a practising Roman Catholic.
He enjoyed religious retreats and had travelled to Rome to see the late Pope John Paul II on a World Youth Day in 2000.
"We believe that cannabis was a directly-contributing factor towards his death," she said, "and no one will ever convince me otherwise.
"He was a perfectly healthy and happy young man until he started to use cannabis.
"Eventually, it caused his depression and he was smoking it to heal himself. There are a lot of young people out there killing themselves through drug use and much more needs to be done to raise awareness.
"Depression is an illness that creeps up on you - it is so slow. We believe cannabis caused the depression and more should be done to investigate its links with mental illnesses."
Mental health charity Rethink has been calling for a definitive study on the long-term affects of cannabis.
Paul Farmer, its director of public affairs, said: "The tragic case of Stephen Breheny shows how important it is that the risks of cannabis are better understood and publicised, particularly among young people. We support the Breheny family's call for further investigation of this issue.
"It's time for a national awareness campaign so that no more lives are lost and families devastated."
Stephen was training at Salford University to be a nurse and worked on placement at Prestwich Hospital.
The inquest in Bury was told he had cut his wrists and tried to commit suicide before. He had been drinking and had taken a quantity of anti-depressant drugs on the night he died last December. Efforts to revive him failed and he later died in hospital.
Stephen was first diagnosed with depression and put on medication in November, 2003. But his family believe his problems started a few years before and told the inquest that he found his problems hard to discuss.
"We think the cannabis use started when he was 17," said his mother.
"He was not open about it at the beginning. It was only when he became ill that he was open about it. When he stopped smoking it for a few weeks, you could tell the difference. But when he had a smoke he would be a different person.
"Stephen was very easy-going, full of life and had lots of friends.
"He was the life and soul of the party and will be sadly missed."
Coroner Simon Nelson recorded a verdict that Stephen took his own life because he was suffering from a depressive illness.
He said: "It is clear Stephen possessed many qualities and was a caring and considerate young man who had a lot to offer. If ever there is an indication as to the harmful consequences of cannabis, then it is here. It is clear that studies have shown cannabis use impairs functions."
Should cannabis be downgraded? Have your say.
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Isee absolutely no evidence to suggest cannabis played any part in the unfortunate death of this young man. The fact that he was catholic, a religion antirely based around guilt is more likely to have played a part in his lack of psychological well being than a plant. You also fail to state if he was smoking actual cannabis or soapbar, because they are not the same. And again you make use of the recent reefer madness stories without actually checking your facts, you claim that a report was published earlier this month that revealed that long term cannabis use doubled the risk of mental illness, well I'm sorry but that is utter piffle, no such report exists. Reports have recently been published that claim to (but still fail to) make that link, but were your reporter to actually bother reading them instead of just propagating the reefer madness you'll see that they do not even make a convincing argument let alone establish a concrete link. Cannabis had nothing whatsoever to do with the death of this man, and the sooner the parents realise that and stop apportioning blame to an inanimate substance (blame is a human thing, a plant cannot assume blame, it's quite a simple concept), the sooner they can maybe realise how they let him down, and stop passing the buck.
This story is a terrible example of alarmist tabloid hysteria.
There is no evidence whatsoever other than the mothers opinion that cannabis was in any way to blame for this death.
You state he had been drinking and had been taking anti-depressant drugs. It would seem this is a far more likely cause of his suicide.
Were the anti depressant drugs he was taking SSRI's? If so is this just another suicide linked to their use?
A disgusting example of reporting.
Derek Williams
I can't believe the comments below b " what utter drivel. I'd suggest that these people are protecting the drug for a reason and thus their verdict is unbalanced. I have never used the drug and nor do I intend to. However, at school I had three very close friends who all became regular users at about the age of 17. Over a period of around 18 months they completely changed before my eyes. They were once, fun, outgoing, positive, friendly and social people with everything they could possibly want in life. They slowly became insular, negative, depressed and obsessed with the drug to the point that I no longer wanted to know them. They'd completely changed. I saw the same thing happen to people at University on numerous occasions. Too many to recall or mention. As such, nobody will ever convince me that cannabis isn't linked to depression. It doesn't take a report; I've seen it myself. Like alcohol, different people react differently to the drug. Perhaps the posters below don't have these side effects, but it doesn't mean that they don't exist!
This article states:
"He had been drinking and had taken a quantity of anti-depressant drugs on the night he died last December"
Surely these drugs might be to blame? Alcohol is a depressant drug.
Suicide is invariably a complex matter as is depression and im sure this young mans parents are very aware of this, the suggestion is that his ongoing cannabis use was a contributing factor and this is something that cannot be dismissed in such nonchalant fashion. No doubt any discussion on this matter will invariably become polarised but to suggest that his catholic faith contibuted to his suicide is ludicrous in the extreme..Your views on catholicism are a little misguided Chris.
While I have the deepest sympathy for the family of this unfortunate young man, I feel disgusted at the Manchester Evening News for using this family to promote personal politics. Not one piece of evidence is shown linking cannabis to this young man's death and the fact he was drinking and taking anti-depressants is treated as if it's irrelevent.
Weigh the near 100,000 people killed per in the UK by the drugs the government want you to take against a possible link to mental health risks for under 0.05% of the population and stop inflicting 'reefer madness' filth on the people of Manchester. You're fooling no-one and making your publication appear to be in the pocket of the government to the 83% of the population who believe cannabis should not be prohibited. Shame on you MEN.
More people die in the UK due to Illness related to alcool that people dying due to taking Cannabis..... Stop this nonsense Media madness and start talking about all the deaths related to alcool.... oh by the way it's a legal drug... no problem.
Stop the ippocricy and start looking at the facts.
I deeply sympathise with the family of the young man involved , the article however stinks to high heaven of political propaganda , whatever happened to journalistic integrity and objectivity ? You talk of cannabis addiction , this is utterly preposterous it is widely know that cannabis is not in any way physically addicitve
its never nice to hear about a young death, even sadder if its a person whos taken there own life and i think if it helps the family to blame cannabis then i guess its what they must do, i just hope the uneducated and illinformed information they've got doesn't in anyway get used in the fight to get cannabis up graded rather than eventually legalised. i'd like to remind people about leia betts, the girl who died of exstacy about 8/9 years ago,you may remember her dad, an ex policeman who went on every tv program he could get on to spout his uninformed and uneducated veiws about exstacy, he now campaigns for the legalisation of exstacy with testing avalable. mayb when the familys not reeling from there loss there'll maybe look into what there talking about and maybe there'll end up doing the same, cannabis never killed anyone and never will, if there son had a problem in his head it was obviuosly there, yes cannabis could have triggerd what was already there in his head, as could alchol or food addetives or something in his life could have just triggered it but the reason he killed himself was a cannabis joint! come on now, its the year 2005, that kind of talk doesn't wash with anyone in today world, we need real drug info, not people who have just lost a child being given a vioce, i never met the lad and i hope his life wasn't to painful for to long.
did he drink alchol and thats not getting a mention because its legall? no1 ever died of a joint, 80% of a and e addmitions are alchol related, if the family want to get on something look at something thats only legall because of the tax it pays.
rest in peace
lets hope they do there tests and i can in a year or 2 go to the legall cafe to buy my weed rather than some dodgy guy whos trying to sell me smake instead because hes not got any weed today, or i'm getting robbed, either way i can't wait for the safe world of the legal cafe.
Everytime the truth about cannabis comes to light, all the pot heads jump to discredit the story in protection of their herbal crutch.
Booze IS a bigger problem, FOR NOW, but the 4 fold increase in recent years of the arrest of pot addled drivers points to the future unless we clamp down, all drug problems need to be stopped including pot , booze, nicotine ......etc
STOP pointing to one drug in the defence of another, its the arguement of an idiot.
When all the pot-heads are done with saying cannabis is harmless and non-adictive, can I just tell you - from someone who is sober and on planet earth - that cannbais causes a raft of mental problems.
It causes and encourages paranoia, lethargy,psychosis and schizophrenia. If you don't believe the raft of medical reports and scientific papers on the subject then take it from someone - me - who has seen a trail of youths come before the courts for crimes who are all regular pot-heads and who's brains have degenerated over the years to the stages that I would get more sense out of a 2 year old.
As for the ... it causes less damage than alcohol..well what an excuse! You wont be paying for your mental health care over the rest of your life, I have paid enough taxes on my pint!!
It is sad to read of a family who, while comming to terms with the loss of their son, should automatically assume cannabis made their son commit suicide. With the media frenzy now helping to put cannabis back into the spotlight is it any wonder the parents assume the worst case senario that drugs helped kill their son. Many other factors may also have occured to influence his decision including poor family relationships and a depression with life in general. The only thing that can help in this situation where cannabis is concerned is legalisation and propper controls in it's supply and distribution. People need to be told of the benifits of taking the drug and not just the many media scare stories. Change is needed and now.
I am a friend of Stephen's family and have watched them suffer over the past few months. I would like to take issue with some comments raised regarding cannabis use and Stephen's religion. Firstly Stephen's depression arose after using cannabis for some years. I would also like to point out that Stephen's religion did not have an adverse affect on him, in fact it was a tower of strength to him. To assume that Catholicism is responsible for today's drug, drink and mental health problems sounds like an easy target to me.
ok they say cannabis caused his death yet they said he was on alcohol and anti-depressents and those two things together witch should not be done.....and alcohol is a depressent drug and sometimes anti-depressents can cause the problem its self so therefore the combo of pills and alchohol put him over the edge...if he was a smart kid he would know that marijuana helps depression and thats why he smoked it. he most likly was feeling bad that day so to make him self feel better he smoked some marijuana...PEOPLE GET OVER IT ITS A PLANT U CAN NEVER GET RID OF A PLANT.stop the lies spread the seed and dont spread Greed
In response to James, I have experience of both cannabis use AND mental illness, since I suffer from type 1 bipolar disorder and smoke cannabis to alleviate the symptoms. I have a degree in Genetics and Biochemistry. I also have a degree in Human Biology and Psychology. I have read every single published paper on cannabis and mental health (in fact I have read every single research paper ever published about cannabis), and I have the educational background to understand them, not what someone tells me they say. In short, I have both the knowledge and the experience to comment. You have neither. I suggest if you wish to make a statement based entirely on your own (highly UNeducated) prejudice, then you at least do it in general terms and NOT question someone that knows CONSIDERABLY more about the subject, both academically and experientially, than you. THIS is why reefer madness is still perpetuated in our press, because it is left to those that know NOTHING about the subject apart from their own prejudices to comment.
Damn shame.
I am so sorry to hear about the death of this young man. Of all the deaths we have to come to terms with of loved ones, suicide is perhaps the hardest. But it is so important to remember that depression is an illness. It can happen to anybody. Some people are more likely to get it than others, and once they have it have different wasy of dealing with it. If Stephen's way of dealing with it was to use cannabis, he should be respected for this, even though as a complicated plant it might have been both helpful and unhelpful, depending on exactly what it was he was using.
My best wishes to the family in coming to terms with the loss of this young man.
Whilst I have every sympathy for the family of Stephen and that they have every right to say what they think caused his death, I think the Manchester Evening News should have made more attempt to qualify their statements.
There could have been a whole host of reasons for this young man's tragic death, not least ones mentioned in the article, namely drink and anti-depressant drugs.
i find it sad that the MEN is jumping on the anti cannabis bandwagon with such poor material. The poor chap was mixing anti depressants with alcohol and had only been smoking regularly for two weeks. I don't hear anyone talking about the adverse effects of alcohol despite the thousands who die each year or the hundreds of women who are beaten up every weekend. Seems to me that your priorities are all wrong, cannabis use should be encouraged and alcohol demonised.
I am a close friend of Stephen Breheny and unfortunately for those of you who defend cannabis , you are wrong (I used to smoke it a long time ago) I am in no doubt that cannabis played a huge part in what hapened to a dear friend a wonderful loving man who should not be gone from this earth. There was very little alcohol in stephens system (in line with the legal limit) and a small amount of his prescribed medication. I am very annoyed that people feel the need to discredit PROOF of what cannabis does to people.
Steve had a full happy life in front of him a loving family and loving friends, he had his faith and a career in nursing ahead of him. THere was a marked difference in steve when he did not smoke cannabis. You cannot say cannabis does not have a negative affect on people unless you have proper proof and unfortunately the loss of a wonderful loving young man from our lives is what it may take for some people to see this. Please understand that this family are grieving,but they are speaking the truth as did the coroner as have many people before now about the dangers of cannabis. It IS ADDICTIVE, IT IS DANGEROUS and those cannabis smokers out there who feel the need to defend their actions, try going a few weeks without your beloved drug - believe me, you will feel the benefits and possibly change your mind. Many people are grieving for this beautiful wonderful soul . many people saw what it did to him. And if one person reading this is helped that is a good thing.
Stories like this should just prove to people that the media is not about entertainment and information, its about propaganda and control. Shoddy journalism to support failed drug policies. There is no such thing as investigative journalism anymore. Reefer madness is a lie and people/papers/organizations who continually bleat it out are LIARS and HYPOCRITES.
Is it not a bit strange that Depression.... being as multi-factorial in it's origin, is now being turned into a political war over cannabis. Although cannabis, like alcohol, does work as a depressant if used incorrectly, it cannot be blamed for the majority of depression in guys like Stephen...... to assume so would be not only biased but incorrect. To know what social reasons he had for viewing life in such a way, this needs answering, in my opinion. It's just an opinion.
I have had much grief with this drug and other druts. My 16 year old son got sucked into this sceen and our entire family has never or will never be the same.....Stiffer penalities for the people who sell this stuff. All they get around here is a slap on the wrist and they are back out selling...\It destroys minds and families is all drugs are good for...
fFirst, I would like to offer my sympathy to the family of Stephen for thier loss. I feel this story and the comments it has generated clearly demonstrate why we continue to lose the battle against drug abuse. To cite marijuana use as the cause of Stephen's depression is ridiculous. His use was a symptom of a larger problem, depression. However, to claim marijuana is harmless is out and out stupidity! I have been in recovery for 16 years, so I clearly understand problems of addiction and process of recovery. We cannot expect to ever stop illegal drug use if we continue to look for quick solutions and point fingers at outside factors. A clear and simple fact is the secure, stable happy people do not abuse drugs and/or alcohol. For years I have watched as each side of the debate continue to make proposals which ultimately have little or no effect. Until we accept the cause of substance abuse begins and ends inside the user, we will continue to waste our time and money ,while we let our children die.
that is horrible to say that marijuana caused this. I have been smoking marijuana for a few years and nothing negative has come from it. My grades are better than they've been in a long time and i dont feel any motivation problems. I use marijuana at least once a day and to say that it is to blame for a suicide, well that's complete ignorance. Take a look in the books, marijuana is a healer not a killer. Thats a fact.