LIFE WITH A JUNKIE SON AGED 14

Heroin addict Andy Ransom, 14, lives with his mother As the government
promises help for drug-torn families, BBC One's 4x4 Reports follows a week
in the life of a schoolboy heroin addict on Teesside.

Andy Ransom, 14, is one of 2,400 British teenagers officially registered as
being hooked on heroin. He got his first fix at a friend's house when he was
just 12.

Twice expelled, Andy has spent most of the last year in his room - where
dealers come and go - as the council tries to find him another school.

He is trying to give up heroin through a methadone programme for a third
time.

"You can't get even one little wink of sleep and you're just agitated to
death. You get big shooting pains in the groin, belly and back and you sweat
loads," he said.

Andy's older brother was on heroin and his three cousins are addicts.

He lives with his mother, Thelma, who wanted 4x4 Reports' cameras to show
the hell of living with her son's addiction.

As soon as Andy's methadone runs out, she said, he goes back onto heroin.

She said: "He's followed me to work and threatened to put the windows in if
I didn't give him money.

"He's probably going to end up doing burglaries and dealing drugs. He's
going to prison."

Thelma is one of many single mothers in Stockton struggling to cope with a
violent addict son.

The unemployment blackspot has the highest number of injectors in the
country and the fourth highest drug treatment rate.

Local treatment schemes, last month hailed by the home secretary as the
solution to cleaning up Britain's drug problems, have sprung up in
abundance.

But many of the service users feel the very act of keeping care in the
community is worsening the problem.

Three years ago Tina Williams set up Panic - Parents and Users Against
Narcotics In the Community - when she was trying to get her heroin addict
son Cliff into a residential treatment centre.

At 21, Cliff had no veins left in his neck to inject and his methadone
treatment was giving him nightmares and deep vein thromobosis.

"The government gives users three options: methadone, community treatment or
jail," said Tina, one of three parents invited to give evidence to the House
of Commons home affairs select committee on drugs.

She said: "For a lot of users methadone won't work, just as Prozac won't
work for everyone who's depressed.

"Community treatment is about bureaucrats putting ticks in boxes. Keeping
addicts in a drug-ridden area like Stockton is like keeping an alcoholic in
a brewery."

Yet there is only one residential drug treatment centre for the under-20s in
the country - Middlegate Lodge in Lincolnshire.

A National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse spokeswoman said: "Removing
people from their home can make them vulnerable and disorientated.

"Intensive support in their own environment is more effective."

But Tina feels the agency is protecting a vested interest.

"There's a whole industry now that's been created around drug use.

Detox Unit Appeal

"The so-called experts have been paid to deal with people in the community
so they want the cash to stay there."

Panic is trying to raise UKP 500,000 for its own detox and rehabilitation
unit with instant access on the North Yorkshire moors.

Tina said: "Community treatment will never work while our children are
living round the corner from drug dealers.

"It's the worst thing in the world to watch a kid slowly kill itself, crying
out for help that isn't there."