Daniel Smith Stole Anna Nicole’s Drugs
The inquest into the death of Daniel Smith, son of Anna Nicole Smith, continues, and Larry Birkhead gave some pretty incredible testimony yesterday concerning some missing Methadone in Anna’s house:
Birkhead testified that in April 2006, Anna realized some of her Methadone was missing in her Studio City home. Birkhead said Anna had surveillance cameras in the house, checked them and found video proof that Daniel and his buddies were the culprits.
While Birkhead was under oath, he was asked about statements he made to the cops back in 2006, when he was at war with Anna. He had told police he saw Howard K. Stern smoke pot with Anna and Daniel. During his testimony, Birkhead said he was not completely clear on what he saw.
UPDATE: Birkhead also told cops Anna had given Daniel Ecstasy, but on the stand Birkhead said he couldn’t say this actually happened.
Birkhead said Daniel’s personality completely changed between January 2006 and May. He saw Daniel throw a TV through a window. Daniel often stayed out all night long and Anna was worried.
Also, Daniel was admitted to an L.A. hospital for misuse of valium in mid July, 2006.
What, you mean people make up and exaggerate claims to the police when they are angry with someone? Shocking!
Methadone is often used for people trying to break other drug habits:
This medication is a narcotic pain reliever and is used for severe pain. It is also used in the treatment of narcotic addiction as part of an approved program. Methadone is a potent narcotic substance. It can cause serious side effects and toxic reactions if used by someone other than the person for whom it is prescribed. Do not share this medication with others.
However, in recent years people have become addicted to methadone in place of other drugs, such as heroin:
In North Carolina, deaths caused by methadone increased eightfold, to 58 in 2001 from 7 in 1997 - an “absolutely amazing” jump, said Catherine Sanford, a state epidemiologist. In Maine, methadone was the drug found most frequently in people who died of overdoses from 1997 to 2002. It was found in almost a quarter of the deaths. In the first six months of last year, methadone killed 18 people in Maine, up from 4 in all of 1997. Dr. John H. Burton, medical director for Maine Emergency Medical Services, said hospital emergency rooms were seeing “a tidal wave” of methadone-related cases.
The increase in methadone overdoses and deaths has floored many drug experts because methadone, which does not provide a quick or potent high, has long been considered an unlikely candidate for substance abuse. It can be hours before a user feels any effect, and it works more like a sedative than a stimulant.
And because methadone is considered such an important and affordable tool for treating addiction and pain, health and law enforcement officials are facing a quandary: how to stop methadone abuse without curtailing its valuable uses — and especially without driving addicts back to drugs like heroin. [...]
Naïve users might be “people who are just at a party and someone will give them some methadone,” said Dr. Burton, the emergency medicine specialist in Maine. “They might mix it in with a beer or with some other drug. They take it thinking it’s just like any other drug and will give them a buzz, and they end up either dead or deeply unconscious.”
Methadone’s delayed narcotic effect and its lack of a potent high are important reasons the drug can be so dangerous, experts say.
“By the time they’ve actually overdosed, no one is with them to see what’s happening,” said Kimberly Johnson, director of the Maine Office of Substance Abuse.
Joseph Haddock, an analyst for the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, said some people, unaware of the drug’s delayed effects, “take methadone, don’t get the effect that they want, take more methadone, still don’t get that reaction, and they take more methadone, so they end up overdosing.”
Since Daniel died in his mother’s hospital room late one night when he was visiting his mother and newborn sister, it could be that he took the drug several hours before even arriving at the hospital, and it was only later that the serious effects of the drug kicked in. He also had Zoloft and Lexapro in his system at the time of his death.
Yet another example of something that is supposed to be used for good, being perverted and used for harm. There’s nothing wrong with using medications to treat various disorders, be they an illness or a mental problem or even to break a drug habit (after other options have been exhausted). However, like anything else, often people use the medications in ways they were never supposed to be used, or mix them with medications they were never meant to be used in conjunction with. The medications themselves often are not bad, it’s when people use them for reasons they were never intended to be used for that the problems start.
I don’t even want to go into what might have caused Daniel to turn to drugs. What makes any kid do something like that? Although, I do have to point out that Anna Nicole certainly did not live what you might call a “normal” lifestyle, and life in a fishbowl might have turned out to be too much for the shy Daniel to cope with. All you have to do is watch a few episodes of the ANS show to see his weariness with the everpresent cameras in his life.
Howard K. Stern is scheduled to testify today, so that should create some fireworks.
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