A talented teenager died of a massive overdose after stealing morphine tablets from a drug dealer, an inquest heard.

Joel Lewis, 17, went to buy cannabis with a friend but pocketed a box of 100 tablets while he was there.

Landscape gardener Joel told friends they made him feel nice, like “Mr Floppy”.

But the teenager took too many and his mother found him dead in bed at their home in Treorchy.

The coroner said Joel’s morphine toxicity levels were the highest he had ever seen.

The inquest heard the tablets were Zomorph prescribed by doctors as painkillers for cancer patients.

His best friend Jordan Jones told the hearing: “We decided to get some drugs for the weekend as we normally do.

“After we left, Joel showed me a iPhone box sealed up with insulation tape which he’d taken from the drug dealer.

“We opened the box, there were 100 Zomorph tablets in blister packs as they would if they came from the doctors.”

(Image: Dimitris Legakis/Athena Pictures)

The teenagers researched the drugs on the internet and saw they contained morphine.

Jordan said: “I knew that morphine was dangerous, I didn’t want anything to do with them.”

The inquest in Pontypridd heard later that weekend he could see that Joel “was a bit out of it” at a friend’s house.

In a written statement Jordan told the hearing: “I asked him how did he feel and he said: “Lightheaded, it feels nice.”

“I said: “Like Mr Floppy is it?” - he said yes.”

Joel's mother Lysa Lewis told the court her son was watching The Greatest Showman on TV at 3am on the day he died.

At 4am she could hear him snoring and went downstairs to tell him to go to bed.

She said: “Before I went to work at 6.15pm I went to his room and left a cigarette and some money for him.

“He grunted to me in response as teenagers do.”

(Image: Dimitris Legakis/Athena Pictures)

Mrs Lewis said she became concerned later in the day because Joel hadn’t called her and was not answering his phone.

She found him lying on his side in bed with foam coming out of his mouth and gave CPR until paramedics arrived to declare him dead.

The court heard Joel worked for his father’s landscape gardening company after leaving school and was talented at his job.

Mrs Lewis said she knew Joel hanged around with drug users and she was aware he smoked “weed”.

But a post mortem examination found cocaine, cannabis and exceptionally high levels of morphine in his system.

Delivering a conclusion of a drug related death, acting Glamorgan senior coroner Graeme Hughes said: “It’s a very high reading indeed. I can’t recall such a high level at an inquest.

“Joel was a naive user in terms of morphine, he would not have built up any tolerance to the drug.”