IT'S a terrible fact of modern life that people who like to dabble with so-called "recreational drugs" only get the message that they are potentially dangerous when someone dies.

In the most recent case, former Bolton woman Andrea Murphy died after taking a combination of amphetamine and the club drug known as GBH.

Now, her heartbroken parents are campaigning to ban gammahydroxybutyrate - the drug it is legal to possess or use but illegal to produce.

Bolton has already had a brief but near-deadly brush with this latest designer drug, which masquerades as a harmless-looking, colourless liquid. Last year, four people collapsed in the town centre after trying it out. Two of them stopped breathing for a time.a

As long as people seek more and more pleasure from drugs, different types will emerge, and, as there is no quality-control in the shady world of drugs, some will kill.

Only when it is publicly acknowledged by the young that casual drug-taking is ALWAYS a game of Russian Roulette, with only the drug supplier the winner, will there be a chance of cutting the death toll of this frightening modern phenomenon.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.