Grieving parents are among protesters who are lobbying Parliament to change a law with "blood on its hands" as one mum told Priti Patel she's "deaf" to the evidence.
Bereaved families joined former drug users, campaigners and MPs in Westminster on Tuesday, June 28, to explain how the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is killing people.
It's the only piece of legislation in British law which hasn't been formally evaluated or reviewed since its introduction more than 50 years ago.
The Act endeavoured to protect people from harm by stopping the supply, possession or manufacturing of drugs across the UK
But campaigners told the Mirror it has "failed at every level", with a staggering 4,553 drug related deaths in England and Wales in 2020 - higher than anywhere else in Europe.
Controlled drugs which fall under the Misuse of Drugs Act kill 12 people every day, 86 people a week, 376 people a month, and 4517 a year on average in the UK.
For Alison Bedford-Russell, an intensive care doctor, the law abandoned and was complicit in the death of her son George, who she feels was "murdered".
After developing moderately severe depression as a teen, George began experimenting with drugs at school, but the "rot set in" when he went to university to study English.
Despite repeatedly reaching out to mental health services, Alison says George was rejected because of his addiction problems.
He had been clean for seven weeks when he relapsed and died of a heroin overdose six years ago, at just 24 years old.
She told the Mirror: "George was highly intelligent, really bright, really good at sport and a really good musician.
"He was someone who recognised he had mental health problems.
"I was absolutely furious at the health and social care services that he recognised he needed mental health support - but he was refused because he had been in addiction services, it was crazy.
"He'd not been taking any heroin for a couple of months when he relapsed. It was an accident waiting to happen.
"I feel he was murdered by criminal gangs with some kid likely at the tip of it selling him this stuff.
"But because it's illegal to take heroin, it was George who was treated like a criminal and stigmatised.
"The Misuse of Drugs Act is directly responsible for the increase in heroin and cocaine deaths.
"Priti Patel says 'lets get more hard on drugs' - she's just not listening, she's deaf.
"Ministers are just not listening to the evidence."
Today there is no debate that addiction and mental health issues go hand in hand, but the families say despite this, the legislation and public services have still not caught up.
Hilary Mills believes that if her son Ben had not been labelled as a "subhuman junkie", and given job or travel opportunities, he could still be here today.
She said: "Ben's father had struggled with drugs and Ben also had ADHD.
"He really struggled with the death of his dad and he was in prison two or three times.
"All it really did was limit his chances in life in terms of getting a job or going travelling.
"I'm not suggesting you don't have consequences if you break the law but they could have looked behind the reasons of why this was happening and tried to help Ben.
"Ben was more than just an addict, he was kind funny and sensitive, all of us are multifaceted, we can't just be labelled as one thing.
"Some people might say 'you choose to take drugs' - and that may be true to begin with, but I would argue no one chooses to be an addict.
"Anyone who has seen what it does to you will agree, you would never choose that life."
Ben, 27, died of a heroin overdose in 2018 after trying to abstain from drugs and agreeing to go to rehab.
Alison and Hilary are just two of countless parents who have joined 'Anyone's Child', a branch of the charity Transform Drugs, which has been campaigning to change drugs policy for more than two decades.
Jane Slater, Deputy CEO of Transform Drugs, says she is fuelled by these stories to keep driving for change.
Having set up Anyone's Child six years ago, the organisation has now called on its supporters to write to their MP, imploring them to back their calls for a national debate about drugs laws in the UK.
They want to see reforms to more evidence-based laws, offering support to rehabilitate drug users instead of criminalising them, and extinguishing criminal drugs gangs by regulating drugs and putting them in the hands of doctors.
One campaigner and former addict, Peter Krykant, believes the first step is providing a safe space to take drugs with professionals who are on hand to prevent them from overdosing.
The dad of two from Glasgow, Scotland, made national headlines when he converted an old ambulance into a mobile overdose prevention centre, giving people clean heroin.
Peter, who became addicted to heroin himself at the age of 17, felt he needed to take action after his home city faced the worst outbreak of HIV in 30 years.
From August 2020 to May 2021 he helped to administer 894 injections and prevented nine overdoses, that would have otherwise happened on the streets.
He was even arrested and later released when the Scottish government and police realised his mission, although they couldn't formally condone his services.
He said: "When I was working as a HIV outreach co-ordinator I would be walking away from someone I had helped knowing they would be at risk in another alleyway in a few hours.
"These overdose prevention centres have been introduced in over 150 countries around the world and the results are astounding.
"The UK has a drug death rate five times higher than anywhere else in Europe. On average 12 people die every day.
"That's like a jumbo jet crashing every month.
"The law in the UK is so old it doesn't even deal with some of the drugs we are seeing now. It's not fit for purpose, but the Home Office continues to ignore the evidence."
Since its introduction, the Misuse of Drugs Act has criminalised an estimated three million people, cannabis use is five times higher and heroin use is 25 times higher than it was in 1971.
Across Britain £6.9 billion is spent every year on dealing with drug related offences, and since 1986 people have been sentenced to a total of 680,000 years in prison for drug related crimes.
The latest figures for drug related deaths (covering 2021) are not yet available but since 1994 the number of people dying from drugs has more than tripled.
Now more than 50 MPs and Peers have signed a statement calling for reform to the Misuse of Drugs Act, making it one of the biggest issues with cross party support in the UK.
But it's not just politicians who recognise the system is broken.
Former policeman Neil Woods has been left battling PTSD after 14 years serving as an undercover drugs operative with Derbyshire Police.
The ex-officer told the Mirror he feels a "profound sense of guilt" for targeting addicts or the "most vulnerable people" who were the "easiest to manipulate and exploit" for information.
He believes all of those people are now dead as a result.
He said: "I had a breakdown in 2012, it took a lot of unpicking to understand that my chronic PTSD is as a result of fighting on those frontlines but it's also a profound sense of guilt at the harm that I caused.
I used to go into a community and seek out the most vulnerable people because they were the easiest to manipulate and I was in the business of manipulating those people
I saw nothing wrong with that, it was a means to an end, but I caused harm to all of those people. They ended up going to prison.
"They were useful because they are the people who were on the most drugs so I exploited them.
"These people are being exploited by both sides of the drugs war, by me and by organised criminals.
"Organised crime loves vulnerable people because they're a cash cow for them so they are caught in the middle.
"All of the vulnerable people that I exploited, they will all be dead now. They will be part of those awful statistics that are not just numbers, they are real people who we are actively causing harm to."
Neil adds that if the law doesn't change "people will continue to die" and that the current policy has given rise to child drug dealers across county lines.
He said: "I was on the frontlines of the war on drugs, I was working hard to fight this war, I was a bit slow because it took me many years to realise I was having no impact.
"For example one undercover operation for seven months caught 96 people including six main gangsters but only interrupted the drugs supply for just two hours.
"The police are really good at catching drug dealers, especially in the UK but that's part of the problem because they don't reduce the size of market but they do change the shape of it.
"We now have 50,000 children dealing heroin and crack cocaine in the UK and that's my fault and people like me, because the market adapts and becomes more ruthless in response to policing, and part of that ruthlessness is to use children.
"This is a result of our policy and it would not have happened otherwise."
The Government claims it keeps drug control under constant review and works in consultation with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to consider any new evidence.
In December it published a 10-year drugs strategy, promising to invest a further £780 million to rebuild drug treatment and recovery services, including for young people and offenders.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Any death due to drug misuse is a tragedy which is why our recently published 10-year drugs strategy will support people through treatment and recovery, as well as an even tougher response to criminal supply chains and the demand that fuels these illegal markets.”
