HOME OFFICE ADVICE TO CLUB OWNERS

Sir, As someone with years of experience in working as a social worker in
the drugs field, I can agree with the Home Office advice to club owners,
regarding amnesty boxes where young people can deposit drugs before being
searched and chill-out rooms (report, March 8): good ideas if it is assumed
that the use of ecstasy will inevitably continue to increase. But I am
worried that the Government is not doing enough to educate younger people
in the long-term dangers of taking ecstasy.

Introducing these measures would give tacit permission for the illegal use
of ecstasy. Many recent research findings, including one investigation
funded by the Dutch Ministry of Health, refer to the long-term effects of
frequent ecstasy use resulting in a generation of fortysomethings with
Alzheimer-type symptoms.

These brain-damaged people will not know or appreciate their problems until
it is too late to help or treat them.

If ecstasy is as popular and as widespread as is claimed, then we are
talking of a huge number of people sick, unable to work or remember their
names as they approach the prime of their life. Education and public
funding of further research are the best ways of getting this message across.

Yours faithfully,

Bridget Furst