Desperate father pleads for movement as authorised celebration drug destroys his teenage son

By Julie Henry 915AM GMT twenty-one March 2010

Daniel Welch eighteen photographed with his father Stephen Welch at a authorised holiday home in Staunton Wales Photo SWNS

Stephen Welch, rang BBC Radio 4"s Today programme in recklessness since he did not know how to stop his son Daniel"s obsession to mephedrone and his appeals for dilettante await had been rejected.

The 58-year-old spelt out the being of hold up with a teen who is destroying his health with a authorised substance.

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And he suggested that the drug can be paid for openly over the phone on an 0800 series "like a Chinese takeaway" and delivered in fifteen mins at a cost of less than �1 a hit.

He additionally suggested that majority of his son"s friends in the affluent, Gothic marketplace locale of Saffron Walden, were additionally contingent on mephedrone and experiencing earthy and mental problems as a result.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Welch, a self-employed accountant, described how last week, Daniel collapsed in front of him after a complicated week end receiving the torpedo drug.

"He had heart pains, his red blood vigour was all over the place, his physique went numb," pronounced Mr Welch. "Then he went in to a hitch of heated basin and suicidal tendencies. We were very, really scared.

"We thought that may be we were going to lax him. It was a terrifying situation."

The close Welch family is unfortunate for assistance but have been told by mental health experts that their son"s drug receiving is a "lifestyle choice" that they can do small about.

"The pronounced they were not means to suggest us any assistance, detached from saying, if necessary, take him to collision and emergency," pronounced Mr Welch, 58. "There has been an suggest of pain-killer sessions but no discuss of reconstruction or even counselling."

Evidence is flourishing of a mephedrone widespread between immature people opposite the amicable range. A consult published yesterday suggested that some-more than one in thirteen students who attend Cambridge University have attempted the drug.

Last week, it was related to the deaths of Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, in Scunthorpe. Police have additionally reliable that a partygoer"s genocide from a heart conflict in Feb was caused by mephedrone poisoning.

Despite sharpening fears, the Government has taken no movement to anathema the drug. The piece is actively marketed on dozens of websites as plant food, with the companies and people who sell it creation millions of pounds without encumbrance by the authorities.

"It is identical to grouping a Chinese takeaway but it comes quicker and is cheaper," pronounced Mr Welch.

"The teenagers ring the 0800 series and it is delivered in small packets that contend "plant food, not for human consumption".

"Four grams costs �35 and is sufficient to give dual hits to twenty people, that is underneath �1 a hit. Four grams of heroin costs about �200.

"All of his friends are receiving it, together with a little who wouldn"t have overwhelmed any drug prior to but take this one since it is legal.

"They are all carrying the same problems. They are all, inside of a really short space of time, apropos dependant on it."

Before finding the drug, Daniel had finished his GCSEs at a in isolation Quaker propagandize and was study a vocational march at a college nearby Norwich.

But the goods of his robe have left the teen muddled, vexed and incompetent to work. While he has attempted alternative drug and has used cannabis regularly, the high he experienced with mephedrone was in a opposite league.

Mr Welch, whose 3 alternative young kids have never had drug issues, pronounced the accessibility of the drug done it so majority harder to strengthen Daniel and mangle his dependency.

"It needs to be banned, if usually to have it some-more formidable to get hold of," he said. "I"m not genuine sufficient to think it will not still be there. It will go subterraneous but it will turn some-more costly and it will put a little young kids off receiving it if it is illegal.

"It is no great the Government observant "we need to wait for for this cabinet or that report". People are failing from this substance.

"We have had a terrifying experience with the own son. People are creation a happening out of provision this things and it is causing comprehensive massacre with the children."

Meanwhile, until the Government acts, the Welch family try to cope with the day-to-day consequences of Daniel"s addiction.

"My mother is influenced the majority as she is at home most. It is emotionally usually draining," pronounced Mr Welch. "We are positively up in arms by this.

"The possibilities are as well horrible to think about those dual bad boys in Scunthorpe who died. My son pronounced "I looked at their cinema and they looked identical to normal kids". I pronounced to him "Daniel, you see identical to a normal kid".

"He has been really fearful by what has happened this week. We can usually await him and goal that he is entrance around to realising what a fatal piece this is."

Daniel pronounced that the open and Government officials did not realize how bad the incident had turn with mephedrone.

"I wish to get opposite the large outcome it has had on my hold up and on the lives of people identical to me," pronounced the teenager.

"Something needs to happen. People are you do the drug who would never think of you do bootleg drugs. It is inspiring normal people.

"It is so straightforwardly available, a phone call away. And it is so poor that someone regularly has it. You can barter a cigarette for a line. And that creates it tough to mangle afar from it.

"Ive got a lot of big decisions to have right away about who I see and who I dont. The complaint is these are normal friends, people at university.

"But if I lift on in the approach I have been I could be passed in 3 months. Im losing weight, Im not the chairman I was."