Mother of toxic ‘diet pills’ death student urges online restrictions
THE mother of a student who died after taking toxic “diet pills” has called for a clampdown on websites selling potentially deadly drugs.
Speaking after hearing how her daughter sent a “heartbreaking” text saying she knew she was dying, Fiona Parry called for tighter controls of online sales of dinitrophenol (DNP).
The inquest heard that 21-year-old Eloise Parry, from Shrewsbury, died within hours of taking eight DNP tablets in April this year.
After the hearing at Shropshire’s Shirehall, her mother said: “I would very much like to see much harsher and stiffer penalties for distributing and supplying this substance.”
Ms Parry, a chemistry teacher, added: “Looking good should never cost you your health or your life.
“It’s been difficult to listen to the events that led to my daughter Eloise’s death and there’s a certain amount of relief the inquest is now over.”
The student’s mother said if the drug had been banned, her daughter “would have taken more seriously the warnings about how dangerous it was”.
Urging others not to be tempted into using DNP, Ms Parry went on: “If somebody as capable as her can make that mistake it really worries me that other people will.
“So I want people to know how much it cost her, in the hope they will realise how serious those warnings are.”
Ruling the death to be accidental, Shropshire Coroner John Ellery said: “This is clearly a dangerous, toxic and fatal substance which should not be accessible, certainly not to persons seeking unlicensed non-prescribed medication.”
The hour-long inquest was told Eloise, who was being treated for bulimia, drove herself to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital hours after taking DNP at her flat on April 12.
In a text message sent while she was at the hospital, Eloise apologised to her lecturer and tutors at Glyndwr University in Wrexham for “being so stupid”.
The message, read to the court by Detective Sergeant Andy Chatting, said: “I screwed up big time. Binged/ purged all night and took four pills at 4am.
“I took another four when I woke and I started vomiting soon after. “I think I am going to die.” The inquest heard that a website marketing DNP – an industrial chemical historically used in explosives, dyes and fungicides – had been closed down.
But it then “popped up again in an almost identical format” hours later.