CANNABIS SENT TRAGIC SHAUN OVER EDGE

STANDFIRST: Home Secretary David Blunkett yesterday effectively
decriminalised cannabis, marking the biggest shift in Government policy for
30 years. For parents, his move will only add to their anxiety. All they
can hope is to be able to equip their children with sufficient armoury -
common sense and moral integrity - to emerge from adolescence unscathed.
Katy Edwards spoke to one mother who blames cannabis for robbing her of her
youngest son.

THE cannabis debate will inevitably roll on. To legalise or not to
legalise, that is the question. Meanwhile, youngsters are getting on with
the business of smoking it, rolling joints, making bongs, hot-knifing -
whatever gets it into their bloodstream the quickest.

Ever since David Blunkett announced plans to downgrade Cannabis from class
B to C last October, the word on the street has been that you cannot be
lynched for possession. Users are even smoking it openly in public places.
Parents would be naive to assume their child has never shared a spliff or
rolled a joint. A survey by the Alcohol and Health Research Centre last
year showed that just over 35 per cent of 15-16-year-olds had tried cannabis.

Billed as the least harmful of recreational narcotics, cannabis can still
wreck lives, as Maureen and John Griffiths found out, to their horror, when
it drove their son Shaun to commit suicide.

Shaun Griffiths was a day away from his 17th birthday when he took his own
life. It was not a spur of the moment thing. He had been planning it for
some time.

His father found him upstairs in their house in Castle Hedingham, a rope
around his neck and a plastic bag over his head. Shaun had also placed a
canister of lighter fuel in the bag with the button taped down. This was no
cry for help.

That was 14 years ago. Now, for the first time, his mother Maureen, 58,
wants to speak about his death as a warning to other young teenagers. She
has no doubt that cannabis had disturbed his mind, possibly even prompting
paranoid delusions or schizophrenia.

He left several neatly penned notes, which were quickly collected by the
police and a tape recorded message to his friends. In a note to his parents
Shaun wrote: "Mum and dad, I know you want me to be happy. This is the only
way I know how." To his friends he said that his life was not worth living
and that no one understood him. Maureen described the tape recorded message
as 'all confused'.

She said: "I hate to imagine what a terrible state he must have been in
when he made it. He also said he was hearing voices and wanted to know if
he was going mad. They were telling him to commit suicide. This is the only
indication we ever had that he might be schizophrenic.

I believe it is possible the cannabis triggered that mental illness. What
else made him change so much? Even if the cannabis didn't trigger it off,
it certainly couldn't have helped it."

To everyone around him, with the exception of a small circle of close
friends who knew his dark thoughts, Shaun appeared to be a normal teenager.
He was having little trouble fitting in at Braintree College, where he had
started five months before his death and was coping with his three A-levels
in Physics, Chemistry and French. His fifth form personal statement from
his former school in Oxfordshire depicts a well-motivated, rounded pupil
with an interest in drama and the arts and a part time job picking up
litter at the Cotswold Wildlife Park. He also had a pet garter snake and
wrote for the school magazine.

Shaun smiles out from the pages of the family photograph album, playing
tennis on holiday with his older brother, now 33, and living in
Gloucestershire, or petting animals on a farm. A snap taken just a few
weeks before his death shows him happily unwrapping a Christmas present.

Looking at the photographs again at the family's new home in Bury St
Edmunds, refreshes the tragedy for Maureen. Once again, she asks herself
how it could have happened. How her beautiful, talented son, who had his
whole life in front of him, could have thrown it all away.

"We didn't find out he had been smoking cannabis until after his death,"
she said.

"We knew he was smoking cigarettes and we didn't approve. He sometimes went
to the pub with his friends but we weren't aware of him ever having been
drunk. As far as we know, he never took anything stronger than cannabis
apart from possibly Magic Mushrooms once at a party.

That's what his friends have told us and we have to take their word for
it." Shaun's drug habit came to light when Maureen discovered some letters
to friends in Oxfordshire. "It appears they were all unsure of themselves
and of what they were going to do in the future. They spoke of being bored
and were all trying, or thinking about trying drink, drugs and sex. One of
them said his mother might ring me to tell me they had been smoking
cannabis. Another letter asked Shaun why he was still taking drugs.

"We had no idea. He appeared normal whenever he was with us. I am not
blaming Shaun's friends for him smoking cannabis. It was his decision. It
seemed so strange as he had always been anti-everything like drugs and
smoking. He had been brought up as a Christian."

In retrospect, Maureen suspects the cannabis heightened the words of
Shaun's favourite bands (Poison, Bon Jovi, Queen, Pink Floyd) making him
believe they were speaking to him.

"There were quotes in the letters from songs about death and hopelessness.
I found the words quite shocking," she added.

On the day Shaun died, neighbours reported hearing a mixture of heavy metal
and snippets from Jesus Christ Superstar coming from his room, almost as if
there was a battle raging between good and evil, said Maureen.

Shaun had never given his parents any reason to believe he had been
experimenting with drugs or was in any way depressed until a few days
before his death. He returned home from a Christmas visit to see his old
friends in Oxfordshire, unusually withdrawn.

His parents became very concerned after Maureen found a letter he was
writing to a friend.

"Something about the contents seemed final, as if he was saying goodbye,"
said Maureen.

"I asked him whether he was alright or if he was upset about anything. We
begged him to talk about it, if not to us then to his Oxfordshire friends
no matter what the cost of the phone bill. We told him he didn't have to go
to college if he didn't want to, we could find him a job."

Shaun did not reveal anything. The next day, he went shopping with a friend
in London and returned home positive and cheerful, telling his parents
hewould stay at college.They were relieved by the apparent change of heart.
Now, Maureen realises there may have been different forces at work in his head.

"I wonder whether it was just because he had made his mind up, he knew what
he was going to do," she said.

The first day back at college in January Sean was invited to a party the
same evening. His father drove him there and picked him up.

Maureen said: "He was a bit quiet on the way home but he seemed OK."

After Shaun's death, his parents discovered he had told everyone at the
party he was going to kill himself the next day. He had even withdrawn all
of his savings in order to buy them all drinks.

The following morning, Shaun said goodbye to his parents as usual, making
as if to go to college. Instead, he stayed at home to carry out his plan.
When he failed to turn up for lessons, a friend, who had heard his
intentions at the party, telephoned to check up on him. Shaun answered and
told the friend he was fine. When the boy rang again, later that afternoon,
there was no reply. Shaun's father heard the telephone as he came in from
work. The call worried him and he rushed upstairs. He discovered Shaun's
body lying on the stairs leading to the attic and tried, in vain, to
resuscitate him.

A post mortem showed Shaun had died of asphyxiation. Maureen does not
believe that tests were carried out to detect cannabis in his bloodstream.
A coroner recorded a verdict that Shaun had taken his own life.

Maureen said: "There are still so many questions unanswered. It was all so
strange and many of Shaun's friends did not want to talk at the time.

Fortunately John and I are both Christians and our faith has helped us to
carry on. Neither of us has sought to blame the other. I'm not saying we
are blameless, you always look back and think you could have done something
different but you do only ever do the things you think are best for your
children at the time.

"We trusted Shaun. We thought that the good values and ideas that he had
before he was a teenager would carry him through those difficult years. We
were obviously wrong but it is too late now for us or Shaun.

"Life for teenagers in the 1950s, when John and I were young, was much
easier. We didn't have so much pressure on us and there seemed to be
moreambition to improve yourself. We wanted to learn, we had hope for the
future that the world would be a better place that we could help create a
caring society. We had Christian values.

"Somehow, in trying to improve things for our children we have failed. They
have the material things but the other values seem to have been lost.

"Sometimes I am very sad thinking of Shaun's death and the pain and
suffering he must have been going through to have taken his own life. Then
I remember the good times. He did have a happy childhood, his brother
confirms this. It was only when he was about 13 or 14 that the influence of
others took over and he began to change, not for the better.

"We have been through great pain and suffering because of what happened and
our inability to prevent that outcome. We all have a duty to do our best to
make the world a better place for everyone and give hope to our youngsters.
Legalising cannabis is not the way forward.

"We love Shaun. I believe that, in spite of what he did, he is in heaven.
He was such a wonderful part of our lives and we miss him and wish he was
still with us.

"We have decided this is the right time to tell his story as a warning to
other young people tempted to experiment with drugs of any kind. It looks
as though cannabis will eventually be legalised. I believe that would be a
grave mistake. Perhaps Shaun's example will make people aware of the
dangers before it is too late."