Mum who lost 15-year-old daughter to ecstasy wants drugs to be legal’
And she claims she's even forgiven the dealer who sold her drug
A MUM whose daughter died three years ago after she swallowed ecstasy powder that was 91 per cent pure says she has forgiven the dealer and “wants drugs to be legal”.
Anne-Marie Cockburn, 45, lost her daughter Martha Fernback back in July 2013 after the 15-year-old swallowed half a gram of ecstasy while on a day out kayaking in Oxford with her friends.
The effects of the drug took their toll on Martha within 20 minutes. She had taken enough for 10 people.
The heartbroken mum told the : “A few weeks before Martha died I had found out she had taken ecstasy, so I sat her down and asked her about it. She admitted it straightaway. I was horrified and started to shout at her, asking why she’d do such a thing.
“She was equally shocked by my reaction – she had obviously had a good time, so my feelings about what she’d done weren’t in line with what she’d experienced.
“I shut down the conversation, as I didn’t like what I was hearing – I truly wish I had known then what I know now about drugs, as I’d have talked about the dangers in order to help her be as safe as she could. It’s no different to an age-appropriate sex education conversation.”
Anne-Marie claims her daughter had been searching online how to take ecstasy safely in the weeks leading up to her death.
Martha had bought her ecstasy through a 17-year-old friend of a friend, Alex Williams, who admitted selling the drugs that killed her. She had no idea where the drug had come from or what its purity or contamination level was.
Her mum added: “She wanted to get high, she didn’t want to die.”
Anne-Marie told the newspaper that her daughter’s death – and how she could die despite growing up in a middle class part of Oxford, made her look into the world of drugs in more detail.
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Since the tragedy occurred back in 2013 she has helped set up the international network of families called “: Families for Safer Drug Control” which brings together those whose lives have been ruined by the UK’s current drug laws.
She said: “I want drugs to be legally regulated for over 18s, which would mean they would be licensed and labelled with ingredients and recommended dosages. Even if these drugs inadvertently got into the hands of a younger person, they would be safer than they are today.
“The dangers that were there when Martha died are still there now, as no law has changed. No responsible parent wants to think of their child taking drugs, but many of them are going to do it anyway, and had she taken something that was legally regulated, rather than in the control of criminal gangs, I believe she would still be alive today.”
Incredibly the mum says she has also forgiven Alex Williams, the dealer who sold Martha the drug, and on the day he was due to be sentenced even asked the judge not to send him to prison.
He was given an 18-month supervision order, with a three-month curfew and 50 hours of charity work.
Anne Marie told the Mirror: “It was such a strange feeling, to see this young guy across the courtroom, but I simply felt that prison wouldn’t solve anything for him or me.
“I was offered the opportunity to start a dialogue with Alex and I knew this was the route I wanted to take – it just felt right. I now know that this is called Restorative Justice.
“We began writing to one another and it became obvious that he had suffered a great deal too as a result of Martha’s death, and that acknowledgement alone made me realise Martha’s death mattered to him – he didn’t take it lightly.”
The mum has also released a book called "5,742 Days: A Mother's Journey Through Loss" and uses to raise awareness of the issue.
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