Why every parent should be terrified by the return of ecstasy
20 years after the tragic death of Leah Betts, the drug is back and more dangerous than ever
TWO YEARS ago, two women sat together in a cafe at London’s Southbank Centre overlooking the Thames. Although strangers, they had much in common. Both were middle-class mothers in their 40s, well-educated and high-achieving. Both had raised their children in loving homes while holding down good jobs.
Yet they also shared an all- consuming grief. For within six months of each other, marketing consultant Anne-Marie Cockburn and English teacher Fiona Spargo-Mabbs had lost a teenage child to ecstasy.
Anne-Marie’s daughter, Martha Fernback, an ‘unforgettable, bright and funny’ 15-yearold, who loved science, playing the piano and walking her pet rabbit, Bluebell, around the Oxford streets near her home, died two hours after taking half a gram of the drug in July 2013.
Fiona’s son Daniel, 16, whom she describes as ‘kind, mercurial, engaging and charming’, was a sixth-former studying for his A-levels near his home in Croydon, South London.
He died in January 2014, three days after taking ecstasy at an illegal rave.
The deaths of two promising, much-loved children highlighted the stark reality that this Class A drug — until recently considered all but extinct in popularity since its Nineties heyday — was very much back.
It had taken the harrowing, public death of A-level student Leah Betts — who died after taking a single ecstasy tablet on her 18th birthday in 1995 — to loosen the drug’s pernicious grip on youth culture at the time.
Those old enough to remember can recall the disturbing image of Leah on a life-support machine, bravely released by her family to show people the dangers of the drug.
Her death helped raise awareness of how indiscriminate ecstasy could be. Now, however, ecstasy — or MDMA to give it its chemical name — is back, only in a stronger and deadlier form than before.
This month, its latest victim was Stephanie Shevlin, 22, who died after taking it at an all-night rave in Crewe, Cheshire.
Meanwhile, an inquest last week heard how 16-year-old Sky Nicol, of Blackburn, Lancashire, died after taking a concoction of heroin, cocaine and ecstasy.
According to the 2016 European Drug Report, ecstasy has surged in popularity in Britain among those aged 15-34 in the past three years. Recent figures into deaths show a fivefold increase since 2010, when there were eight compared with 50 in 2014.
In 1995, there had been just 50 deaths in the three decades since the drug started to be used recreationally. So what’s going on?
MDMA was developed as an appetite suppressant in Germany in 1912, before the U.S. Army used it in psychological warfare tests in the Fifties. It works as a releasing agent for serotonin, the chemical in the brain associated with feelings of happiness.
After peaking in the Nineties, it fell out of favour, partly due to the Betts campaign, but also as ‘rave’ parties waned in popularity.
SALES of ecstasy were also affected by the rise of legal highs — psychoactive substances which mimic ‘traditional’ illegal drugs such as cocaine and cannabis.
Then there was a dwindling supply of the oil-rich chemical safrole, an integral part of ecstasy manufacturing. As quality standards slipped, the drug’s reputation suffered.
But, two decades later, synthetic replacements for safrole have been discovered at the same time as all-night dance music ‘ raves’ are rising in popularity again, mainly with those who are too young to drink in pubs.
Most disturbingly of all, the drug is being discovered by a new generation that is naive to its risks.
Not only is the ecstasy stronger than 20 years ago, it is also much cheaper, at just £2 to £3 a pill compared with £20 in the Nineties.
Martha Fernback died after she took half a gram in crystalline form as she relaxed with friends before heading to a party.
Tragically, what she took was 91 per cent MDMA — almost double the normal street purity average.
In the Nineties, the average MDMA content was between 50 and 80mg. Now it’s closer to 125mg, while some ‘ super pills’ are as a high as 340mg.
The reason for this is down to the whim of the drug manufacturers that produce MDMA in illicit factories in the Netherlands. They favour making premium, hard-to-fake pills that are super-strength in dosage.
Martha’s mother Anne-Marie, 45, and fellow grieving mother Fiona have campaigned tirelessly for better drug awareness; determined to channel their chasmic grief into a force for good.
Oxford-educated Fiona, 49 — who lives with her husband Tim, 53, a charity worker, and their elder son, Jacob, 21 — believes that education is key.
On the fateful night Daniel took ecstasy for the first time, he had told his parents he was going to visit friends in nearby Clapham. Instead, he took the Tube across the capital and went to an illegal rave in a disused cotton factory in Hayes, West London.
On his way, he and four of his friends paid a dealer £80 for 2.5g of MDMA powder.
It is the needlessness of Daniel’s death which Fiona finds soo hard to cope with.
Having achieved a string off A* and A grades in his GCSEs, he had hopes of attending the prestigious military academy Sandhurst.
Since his death, Fiona has set up the Daniel SpargoMabbs Foundation, a charitable trust to help children learn about the dangers of drugs. ‘Taking ecstasy is like playing Russian roulette. You never know what will happen,’ she says.
‘A lot of parents are naive about how prevalent drugs are today, and I would urge them hem to have an open dialogue withith their children.
‘There are also so many shades of harm — even if Dan had survived, he would have lost his legs and the use of his kidneys because of organ failure.’
It has been more than two years since Daniel died, but Fiona feels as though she has yet to start to grieve for his loss.
‘I can’t bear it being true so I go around in a weird haze. It’s about growing the muscles to help you carrycarr the grief anda d li livee withith the pain. I’ve not got there yet. I don’t know how I will,’ she explains.
Anne-Marie’s grief is just as painful to witness. Martha was her only child whom she had raised alone as a single mother since she was ten months old.
While running her own successful marketing consultancy, she had ensured that Martha’s life was full of love, opportunity and adventure. Martha had a tutor for French and piano lessons and enjoyed many exotic holidays.
Controversially, Anne- Marie believes drugs need to be legalised so the ingredients of MDMA, known colloquially as Molly or Mandy, are displayed and regulated.
‘When I speak to kids in schools, they don’t know about Leah Betts and how she died. The message has been lost or forgotten.
‘Too many people are losing their lives to drugs. If Martha had taken something that had been labelled, she wouldn’t be dead. She wanted to get high, not die.’
Following Martha’s death, AnneMarie helped to set up the charity Anyone’s Child and penned a po powerful book called 5,742 Da Days — the length of Martha’s tra tragically short life. Ir Ironically, Martha had res researched online the safest wa way to buy the drug and had ass assumed that the better qu quality it was, the safer it wou would be, which is why she and her friend bought a pure cry crystallised gram from a dea dealer for £40.
An Anne- Marie believes she pro probably did so following a conv conversation they’d had, after MarthaM th had confessed to dabbling with ecstasy six weeks earlier.
‘I remember going on about how she could never know what she’s taking, that it could be mixed with rat poison,’ she recalls. ‘Maybe that was why she went looking for something purer.’
A month before the third anniversary of Martha’s death, Anne-Marie remains bereft.
‘She would be 18 now, thinking about her future. I remember collecting her GCSE results from the two exams she had sat. She got a B in science and an A in French. I looked up and cried out: “My God, Martha love, what a waste!”
‘Whenever I give a talk in a school, I place Martha’s Converse trainers — the pair she was wearing on the day she died — in the middle of the floor.
‘I place them there to show she was real and as a promise that I will take the steps those shoes will never take. I will live for the both of us, I will honour her with my life and I will never stop fighting to make sure her death counts.’
FOR more information: dsmfoun dation.org.uk and anyoneschild.org