LEGALISE DRUGS USE, PLEADS GRIEVING MUM

Jason Smith's grieving mother today called for drugs to be legalised
so dealers could be cleared from the streets.

She spoke after an inquest heard that 26-year-old Mr Smith died of an
overdose of methadone, a substitute for heroin, at his flat in
Parmentergate Court, Norwich.

It followed 13 years of drugs abuse in which Mr Smith first used
cannabis at the age of 13, amphetamines at 15, Ecstasy at 18 and
finally heroin at 22.

But Mrs Shirley Clutterbuck said the radical measure of legalising
drugs would be the only way to stop more drugs deaths.

She said: "Jason was easily led - if you asked him to walk off a cliff
he would.

"He only had a mental age of about 16 when he was 26 and he always
picked up the wrong sort of so-called friends."

Mr Smith died in October 1999, although the inquest into his death was
not held until last week. Coroner William Armstrong recorded a verdict
of misadventure.

Mrs Clutterbuck, 44, of Trelawny Road, Martham, had no idea her son
was using drugs until he caught hepatitis B from using dirty needles.

"If drugs were legalised, all these pushers that live in big houses
with their fast cars would be gone - and my son would never have come
into contact with drugs."

She said that although her son had been receiving treatment for his
addiction at the Bure Centre in Unthank Road, addicts were reluctant
to come forward because of society's reaction.

"I think there are a lot of young people out there who want to get off
drugs and yet don't dare come forward.

"If drugs were legalised, they would find it easier."

Mrs Clutterbuck and her husband Paul said they had "no idea" Jason had
been caught up in such a spiral of drug use.

"It was only when he went into hospital for hepatitis B that I
twigged.

"I asked him if it was sex, but he denied it - so then I asked him if
it was dirty needles. He didn't reply and I knew then."

A spokesman for the Norfolk and Norwich Mental Health Care NHS Trust,
which runs the Bure Centre, today admitted that Mr Smith's death had
prompted an examination of the system of methadone
prescription.

But it has come too late for Mrs Clutterbuck, who said it was a
mystery to her how her son had stockpiled enough methadone to overdose
on.

"He was ever so precise with the methadone - if he poured out too
much, he would put the rest back in the bottle.

"He drank it as soon as the chemist gave him it - I've no idea how he
saved up enough to kill him."

At the age of two, Mr Smith was given up for adoption along with his
sister Lisa because Mrs Clutterbuck, who was then living in Tottenham,
could not cope with the children.

Although Mr Smith was happy with his foster parents - and saw his
mother regularly - Mrs Clutterbuck said she thought he blamed her up
until his death for having him adopted. "He had been drinking once and
he said I didn't love him because I had given him up when he was
little. He said he would go and throw himself off a multi-storey car
park.

"I told him how much I loved him and that I could never have given him
the sort of life he got with his foster parents."

She said he was also devastated when he failed to get into the Army
because he was deaf in one ear from childhood.

A "brilliant artist", he had also tried on two occasions to get into
art college, but was turned down because he was unemployed.

And just three weeks before his death, the grandfather he idolised and
lived with for many years had died.

"I went down with clinical depression when he died and only now do I feel
I'm seeing a bit of light at the end of the tunnel," she said.