End drug ban to save lives like my son’s

Grieving father’s bid to change law

had his high but he would have woken up the next day and we wouldn’t be a devastated family.

“He made a bad decision and it cost him his life.”

He warned that current laws mean dealers can sell drugs filled with “toxic poisons” and users do not know what they’re taking.

Andy said: “I had a meeting with Theresa May and made these points but she said ‘Don’t you think there wouldn’t be a black market?’

“I said I get that, just like there’s a black market in alcohol and tobacco, but at the moment the black market is 100 per cent of the market for illegal drugs.”

He called Daniel “a maestro of fun”, adding: “He would light up the room. To lose all that from our lives was absolutely devastating.”

Daniel took a mixture of heroin and ecstasy and Andy said police suspect fentanyl may have been present in the mixture as well.

“It gives you more bang for your buck but it’s absolutely lethal,” he said.

And the father believes that scientists should be concentrating on finding highs which are not lethal.

“Which scientists are working full out to find the best possible high at the best possible safety?” he asked.

“No one is doing that because we’re all just imagining that no one takes drugs because it’s bad and illegal. “It wouldn’t be a free-for-all.” Following his son’s death Andy decided to retire from his job as a senior executive at a wealth management company.

“I was struggling to cope and trying to carry on,” he said.

“I got through 2017 but I decided I needed to be spending more time with my wife and my other two sons.”

He is now a supporter of the Anyone’s Child network, which supports families who have lost members to drugs.

The organisation said: “No one doubts that drugs can be dangerous. That’s why we should do all we can to prevent children and young people from taking them.

“But banning drugs and criminalising those who get involved with them causes even more harm: drug gang violence, countless lives ruined by criminal records for possession and entirely avoidable deaths from contaminated street drugs. The damage caused by the current approach can no longer be ignored. We need to move beyond fear, discrimination and punishment and towards drug laws that are centred around honesty, compassion and health.”