A TALE OF TWO DRUG-DEALING CHILDREN

My 16-year-old daughter and I allowed ourselves a sickly smile at Jack
Straw's reaction when his son was let off with a caution for selling
cannabis.

"I hope the media will continue to agree he should not suffer additionally
because he is my son," he said. Well, Mr Straw, it depends on your
definition of suffering.

The first I knew of impending trauma was a call from the headmaster of the
sixth-form college where my daughter had just started. After a glowing crop
of GCSEs, a bright future lay in prospect, until the day the head told me
she had been arrested for selling drugs.

A drug dealer? My daughter? It seemed unbelievable, until I saw the police
in the interview room produce a tiny plastic bag of cannabis and a notebook
detailing amounts sold and their value.

She was smoking, not selling, when the police arrested her and a friend
near the college. She had produced the cannabis, the notebook and £35 cash
proceeds when asked to by the police.

What emerged was not some pernicious drug-dealing enterprise, but a means
of paying for her own use of the drug. The names in the book were all her
friends and it was, she assured us, the first time she had done it.

The police acknowledged that the amount involved was "relatively minute".
Even so they, and the solicitor summoned to protect my daughter's
interests, made it clear: she was likely to escape a custodial sentence
only because of her clean record, good character, bright educational
prospects and helpfulness with the police.

So serious was the offence, I was told, that a simple caution was virtually
out of the question. Even the friend, who faced a potential charge simply
of possession, was unlikely to be so lucky.

And so the two were bailed to await their fate. Given the initial shock to
parents who always took a tough line on drugs, what followed was an awful
period. There was no apology from our daughter. Instead she went into her
shell and any attempts to break the ice ended in screaming. She did agree
to undergo counselling with a psychotherapist recommended by our GP. And
she also agreed that the best thing she could do was to put this behind her
and get on with her education.

But while William Straw's place at Oxford seems assured, my daughter was
instantly expelled, despite two appeals by me to her head teacher. The
expulsion was almost as shattering as the ordeal in the police station.

We tried other colleges and schools. Most were full, but she was accepted
by a secondary school. We decided reluctantly not to inform them of her
misdemeanour for obvious reasons. But we had not reckoned with the local
educational grapevine. Within days she was on the carpet for not declaring
the arrest. She left.

We tried the school she had attended before college and this time I
volunteered the information that she had been arrested on drugs-related
charges. They already knew it involved dealing. I received a ticking off
for not being more forthright, and we walked away again empty-handed.

By this time my daughter was in no mood for further rejection. It was
decided she would take a year out and work, which is what she is doing
quite diligently.

Relations at home have warmed to the point where she is able to admit that
she had been utterly stupid. She has not touched the stuff since.

But as we had feared, there was to be no caution. She appeared before the
youth court four months after the arrest, was put on probation for a year,
given 40 days' community service and ordered to pay £40 costs.

No, my daughter is not a minister's child and a natural target of tabloid
interest. And that is the one aspect where I do allow that the Straws have
suffered.

While I regret being anonymous, I would not write this were it to expose my
daughter to even a drop of the kind of publicity Straw and his son have
endured. On this I have always had the strongest sympathy with the
minister: the thing you most want is to keep it as quiet as possible so
that an act of teenage stupidity - which I deplore - does not become a
permanent blight.

But two facts are also clear: my daughter was expelled from school while
Jack Straw's son was not. She was prosecuted, sentenced and given a
criminal record while his son was not. I am therefore not entirely sure who
emerged better off.

- - Anon