15-year-old Martha should be sitting her school exams right now.
But the bright, effervescent teenager — who was already thinking about studying engineering at university — will never make it back to school.
Tragically, she’ll never grow into adulthood. Because last July, Martha took half a gram of ecstasy on a Saturday afternoon with some friends– and within two hours, she had suffered a fatal heart attack.
The teenager collapsed in a park in Oxford in the United Kingdom, the Daily Mail reports, and paramedics attempted CPR on her slight body as horrified sunbathers watched on.
Her mother, Anne-Marie Cockburn, later wrote of the tragic incident that she knew Martha “was already dead on arrival at the hospital.”
“They elevated her arms, but I don’t know why: her eyes were half-open and she was way beyond the clouds and stars already,” Ms Cockburn wrote.
Now, 11 months after the shocking death, Ms Cockburn wants to see some change to the UK’s drug policy — but not the changes you’d think. Rather than calling for tougher penalties for drug possession and distribution, as might be expected, the devastated single mother believes drugs need to be legalised so they can be responsibly regulated.
“I would like to… start a sensible dialogue for change, from prohibition to strict and responsible regulation of recreational drugs,” Ms Cockburn said at the inquest into her daughter’s death earlier this month.
“This will help to safeguard our children and lead to a safer society for us all by putting doctors and pharmacists, not dealers, in control of drugs,” she said.
Ms Cockburn’s beliefs challenge the hard-line prohibition on recreational drugs popularised by the “war on drugs,” a policy announced in 1971 by US president Richard Nixon. The prohibition approach, Ms Cockburn told The Guardian, “had its chance and failed.”
“Martha is a sacrificial lamb under prohibition,” she said .
Top Comments
I hope with my previous comments that I didn't give the impression that drug use is ok. It isn't. But I still stand by bringing alcohol into the equation. It's hardly ever mentioned but it's socially accepted as a drug. I hated the taste of alcohol growing up and used to add orange juice to make it taste good. Not my idea someone else's. Drinking was never an every day thing as it seems to be these days... I've heard recently that the poor girl that tried ecstasy was only 15. And I heard judgements from all angles. You know what, you don't know and can't control what anyone does. Nor should you. I said in a recent comment ecstasy should be legalised. That was a pretty broad statement and I apologise as it wasn't thought out right. Why don't we Put in place testing stations so people know what they're actually using? We have measures for alcohol but not ecstasy or party drugs. They're not going to go away. If there's one thing I've noticed with dance parties dancing on ecstasy as apposed to alcohol is the lack of aggression. Alcohol to me is the most dangerous and it's legal! Make legal testing of drugs. The are available
absolutely make it legal. crime and violence will decrease and devastating cases of young children loosing their lives will cease.