The crack of doom!

1 Comment | Sunday Mirror, Jul 27, 1997 | by David Rowe

TONY Blair is appealing for a person with "energy and vision" to lead the Government's war against drugs. An advert for his recently - announced post of a "drugs tsar" is to appear in the Times on Thursday.

CASE No 1

The village boy who died the first time he injected heroin

TRAGIC teenager Malcolm Meadows died from his first ever injection of heroin. His loving parents, Dennis and Jennifer Meadows, had hoped living in a quiet village would keep their children safe from the drugs menace.

But when Malcolm, a top student and promising sportsman, became depressed he turned to drugs for comfort - with tragic results.

When the 18-year-old overdosed and choked to death in March this year a post-mortem found there was just ONE needle mark on his body.

Dad Dennis, who discovered his son's body, said: "We want people to know it is not just cities suffering from drugs any more."

Dennis, postmaster in the Exmoor village of Porlock, Somerset, said a few weeks before his death Malcolm was showing signs of depression - and his parents believe he turned to drugs as a result.

Dennis said: "We took steps to understand what was happening and to help him. but it was too late."

Colin Frost, a drugs counsellor who was contacted by the family a few days before Malcolm's death, said: "Nobody I've spoken to has had a bad word to say about him.

"It seems certain this was the first time he had injected heroin. Families can no longer move to rural areas like this to escape drugs."

CASE No 2

Girl with everything to live for was killed by pounds 10 fix

HEARTBROKEN Bob and Janet Bultitude found all the love they could give wasn't enough to save their pretty daughter from the evils of heroin.

Privately-educated Samantha, 21, had it all...looks, intelligence, ambition and a glittering future.

But the tennis-mad teenager dabbled in drugs with friends - and quickly became caught up in a tragic web of addiction that claimed her life.

She left the family home at Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, and got a job in a Bristol bookshop.

Her parents even paid for a flat and furnished it - but she sold all her belongings to buy drugs.

And one day she took a pounds 10 "wrap" of heroin, collapsed after suffering massive convulsions, and later died in hospital.

A post-mortem showed she was among of a handful of addicts killed by a rogue batch of dangerously pure heroin. Her devastated mum Janet sobbed: "I keep asking myself whether we could have done anything different.

"But we only found out when she was completely hooked - and then we tried in vain to help her for two years.

"The people who sell drugs are murderers. I had to watch my own daughter die because of them."