April 5, 2007 8:00

Keith Richards: drugs more dangerous then ashes

Medics speak after 'snorting dad' claims

Snorting cocaine is far more dangerous than inhaling dead people, doctors have told NME.COM after Keith Richards claimed to have snorted his father's ashes.

As previously reported in this week’s issue of NME The Rolling Stones' guitarist claimed: “The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father.

“He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared, he didn’t give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

Speaking to NME.COM, University Of Westminster dietician and nutritionist Jessica Swan believes that snorting human ashes would not harm Richards, and that drugs would do far more damage.

"Undoubtedly the cocaine would be much more harmful than his father's ashes," she explained. "There is no way of digesting ashes through your nose and it would have caused relatively little damage. But cocaine passes through the soft moist lining on the inside of your nose and your lungs and that's how it's absorbed. Its effects are harmful and as a result would cause more damage than the ash."

To read the full transcript of the Keith Richards interview go here.