OUTRAGE OVER ECSTASY PLANS

THE sister of a Stockport woman who died from the long-term use of ecstasy
has struck out at proposals to downgrade the designer drug. Debbie
Warburton, 23 died in 1992 from liver failure, triggered by the effects of
taking the drug for two years.

Now the Government's Commons Home Affairs Committee has said ecstasy should
be reclassified from a class A to class B drug.

The report also stated that drug use was a 'passing phase' for many
youngsters which 'rarely resulted in long-term harm'.

But Debbie's sister Claire Keighley-Bray, 24, from Heald Green, believes
Ecstasy is dangerous and should stay in the same classification as heroin.
She said: "Maybe for most people Ecstasy is a passing phase, but they
certainly shouldn't change its classification.

"Debbie was one of the first people to die from it, and since there's been
research to show ecstasy damages brain cells.

"It uses up a happiness chemical called serotonin in your brain, of which
you only have so much for life.

"In five or ten years there will be an awfully lot of people who are
extremely depressed because once they have used up their serotonin that's
it." In February 1992 Debbie died in Stepping Hill Hospital from liver
poisoning. Although it was triggered by ecstasy use, her death was not
classified as being due to the drug.

Claire was only 14 when Debbie died and said that her sister's death had
deeply effected her whole family.

"It was ten years ago now when she died," Claire added. "Even now we are
all feeling the knock-on effects.

"Debbie wrote poems and diaries before her death and they say that she knew
she mixed up in something she just couldn't get out of.

"If you take one pill you can die, you can die from long-term use, you can
die from not drinking enough water and from drinking too much." Helen
Massey-Roche, director of Stockport's Alcohol and Drugs Abstinence Service,
said: "Ecstasy is a very powerful mind-altering drug and can cause
psychosis in later life."

Home Secretary David Blunkett has already dismissed the call to downgrade
the drug. He said: "Ecstasy can, and does, kill unpredictably and there is
no such thing as a safe dose.

"I believe it should remain class A. Reclassification of ecstasy is not on
the agenda."