WE SHOULD BE WARNING YOU ABOUT THE EVIL OF DRUGS. AFTER ALL, OUR SON WAS
SENT TO JAIL BECAUSE OF THEM. BUT WE'RE NOT GOING TO. AND THIS IS WHY...

I could be the darling of the drugs tsar, one of his trump cards. I could
be produced with a flourish for every anti-drug slot in the media, like
Leah Betts's mother. I could be feted by Tony Blair, honoured by the Home
Secretary.

The agony I suffered when my student son was arrested and sent to prison
could be used as another powerful message for young people to avoid the
"evil of drugs". Look at all that pain you might cause your parents. If
drugs don't kill you, you could be locked up for years, scarred with a
criminal record for life. So, learn from my misfortune, listen to the tsar,
the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, your mother, and above all obey the
law!

That would have been the simple thing to do. But it would have been wrong,
and it would have been despicable. The more I found out about what my son
and his friends were doing, the more I realised that it was people like me
who were aiding and abetting the worst problems caused by drug use. Because
of ignorance and fear, we are refusing to face up to reality. Silently, we
continue to allow others to deal with a problem that concerns us all. We
recklessly avoid the evidence that they are making a complete mess of it.

My son, a university student, was arrested in 1995. He and his friends,
unknown to my husband or me, were recreational drug-users. I vaguely
suspected that my son might smoke cannabis, but I did not think it was
something he did frequently, nor that it was widespread among his friends.
They used to take it in turns to acquire cannabis. One day, when my son was
buying some for everyone to use together, the man who was selling also
offered him 50 tabs of ecstasy. He just said yes, and it was left in a pot
in the living room. But ecstasy is a class A drug, and so, when he was
prosecuted and convicted of possession with intent to supply, there was no
alternative but a prison sentence.

It was a complete shock. At first I thought it meant my son was a drug
addict. Then I realised that he had a problem, not with drugs, but with the
law.

In the past six years, I have made it my business to find out everything I
can about drugs and how the law deals with them. It became obvious to me
that the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act is outdated. It is dangerous and harmful,
both to addicts and to recreational drug-users. It inadvertently grants the
monopoly of drug supply to criminals. The use of illegal substances has
widened and proliferated. More people are in prison because of drugs, or
suffering and dying than ever before. At the same time, more people are
enjoying drugs and coming to little harm.

Prohibition has been staggeringly unsuccessful. It is inevitable that it
fails as a policy because it denies the most fundamental thing of all:
human nature. It's not just that forbidden fruits are tempting. It's more
that forbidden fruits can be fun, and the risks are sometimes part of that
fun. If we avoid the truth of this premise, we risk losing the attention of
the young. If we are more interested in control than in safety, we don't
deserve to be listened to.

Recreational drug use and addiction are different. They do not go hand in
hand, as is so often claimed. Most recreational drinkers do not become
alcoholics. It is unhelpful to have different principles for treating legal
and illegal addiction. Some drug addicts will now not be sent to prison,
but will be offered drug rehabilitation programmes instead. But, unlike
alcoholics, they will continue to have the big stick of punishment held
over them. If they test positive for drugs they will be locked up.

This ignores the fact that addiction is an illness. Not all addicts can be
cured, so how can more punishment be seen as the solution? Nor is there any
evidence that punishment acts as a deterrent. Britain has some of the
harshest penalties for drug offences in Europe and yet we also have the
most drug use.

It has been difficult for us to stand up against the status quo, to
question the law. Many believe that because something is the law, it must
be right. But a law which produces more and more victims, a law that would
make criminals of 70 per cent of people under 25 is a bad law.

At first, I felt alone and helpless. I had the support of family and
friends, and everyone who knew my son was appalled by what had happened to
him. They just could not believe he had been sent to prison for
two-and-a-half years. Then I discovered there was a group called Transform,
with the sole aim of getting effective drug laws. We joined, and its
membership is growing rapidly.

My son's punishment was far worse, far more dangerous, than the crime.
Thousands of youngsters are being given criminal records for minor drug
offences. This blights their lives, stopping them travelling to certain
countries and barring them from many careers. An unlucky few get sent to
prison to be brutalised by inappropriate, inhumane treatment.

But the most encouraging thing has been the Police Foundation report in
March 2000. Chaired by Dame Ruth Runciman, it was an independent study by
experts into the effectiveness of the Misuse of Drugs Act. It recommended
that certain drugs need to be reclassified so that their dangers are
reflected accurately. It notes that if alcohol and tobacco were to be
judged by the same criteria, they would be class A and class B. Class A is
the most dangerous, and includes heroin and crack cocaine.

The Runciman committee found cannabis to be less dangerous than tobacco,
and recommended that it be downgraded to class C. The report recognised
that the social sharing of drugs, without profit, was not the same as drug
dealing. For us, this was not only an important endorsement of our
feelings, but a triumph for common sense.

The media gave the Police Foundation report a great deal of attention. They
believed it showed practical ways of improving the law and making it
relevant. But the Government did not. The report was dismissed immediately
because implementing any of the recommendations would "give out the wrong
message". Ten months later, the Home Office officially confirmed this
rejection.

The Police Foundation report was a big disappointment to the Government,
failing to endorse its strategies. The experts that took part in the
inquiry had no need to be politically correct in order to be re-elected. It
was not its remit to spin government propaganda. This is why the Runciman
committee deserves to be listened to, and taken seriously.

The Government pours an ever-increasing amount of money into an industry
aimed at combating the use and supply of illegal drugs. Its henchmen, led
by the tsar, and including law-enforcers, drug education teams and health
workers, do its bidding. But it is run like the Mafia. You keep your job,
you get your funding, as long as you don't question the law or the
Government's strategies.

People are afraid to speak out because they have too much to lose. However,
I can say what those in power do not want to hear: I have nothing to lose.
It is a privilege to campaign on this issue and I will continue to do so.