Change the title Elizabeth Burton-Smith: what my family did on drugs

There is no doubt this is an authentic and heartfelt book. It comes with much high praise, from no less a source than our former PM Gordon Brown and current home secretary, Theresa May. Anyone aware of the inadequacies of the Misuse of Drugs act will begin to hear alarm bells ringing as soon as they have read such endorsements. For how could such members of the establishment ever endorse a book that is then critical of prohibition?

The obvious answer is that they wouldn’t. Not that this should detract from this book. No, the book in many ways condemns itself. This is a story of one family’s tragic loss of one of its members to drug addiction, whilst the surviving twin is a recovering heroin addict.

Time and again the narrative by the family’s mother, Elizabeth Burton-Phillips wastes no opportunity to warn of the dangers of drugs and to tell the reader drugs are evil. In many ways this is conventional fare and herein is the problem. Alternatives to current drug policy are not on the agenda in this book.

Here it is worth taking a further look at the book’s title. Mum Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid: What Drugs Did to My Family. And there you have it. This is a story of what the drugs did. This reviewer is certain that this family has suffered during the period of time its’ sons were addicted to heroin. But what follows in the narrative is that the blame lays at the door of drugs, and what drugs did to my family. Yet it never asks if an alternative future for Burton-Phillips sons could have been had under a regime that regulated and controlled drugs, rather than leaving this to criminal gangs.

It does not take a person with a cold heart to adapt the subtitle and question whether it should read: What my family did on drugs. Not when you consider that parents that have lost their children to drugs, but want to see the back of the Misuse of Drugs Act, face a much harder time in getting their voices heard by an unsympathetic media. Indeed, it would be interesting to see former Prime Ministers and current Home Secretaries address their concerns once in a while.