Plant died. Can I still harvest what's on it?

It's at about week 7 flowering but it wasn't like huge, fully ripened bud. It's a bit premature but I think there are some decent buds on it. The plant magically died. Probably root rot or something I've been fighting off, but the damage is done and it is dead. Lesson learned for the next grow.

My question is; can I chop it down, trim it up and treat it like any other finished plant? Or will the smoke be bad for me?

So long as the buds are not moldy or rotted they will smoke just fine when trimmed & cured.
Usually only means less bud if cropped early by 1 to 3 weeks (if flowering is expected to last 8 to 10 weeks).
They might even be just a stony as if they'd been left to fully mature.
It's like when you clip some smaller buds off of branches to get samples to smoke towards the end before harvesting.
Am doing that to my girls right now (about 2 to 3 weeks from harvest) and, even after the buds are rapid dried in the oven, smoking them gives me "chinese eyes" really badly (rarely happens to me) and gets me stoned like an Old Testament sinner who got caught with his dick in a goat on the Sabbath.

had the same thing happen, sucks, i'm drying mine as we speak.

"like an Old Testament sinner who got caught with his dick in a goat on the Sabbath. "

They is too funny.

Biblical stoner references rule!!!
(fomer Catholic, now agnostic)

"What you talkin bout Jesus"

turns out the plant that died was a total preteen. it looked like it was at week 1 or 2 flowering and had maybe 30 hairs total over the entire plant. i'm kind of bummed cause i think it was the mostly if not all sativa one out of the 6. the other 5 are coming along nicely though