If William Hague, the Secretary of State for Wales, doesn’t step in soon, all copies of the report, even including Jillings’s own copy, will be hauled back to Shire Hall, Mold, and fed through the county council’s paper shredder. John Jillings, the former director of social services at Derbyshire County Council, and two distinguished colleagues have spent most of the past two years drawing up a 300-page report on the child abuse scandal in Clwyd, North Wales Clwyd County Council commissioned it It cost more than pounds 500,000 to compile. Drugs are an increasingly important aspect of our national life, and yet none of our law makers or law enforcers are allowed to debate the facts openly: across the parties lips zip, jaws clamp, eyes shut and ranks close.. Undaunted, she believes she will persuade the council to overturn the Licensing Authority’s rejection of harm reduction measures in clubs.However, people like her who talk honestly about drugs can expect nothing but trouble. It is not OK to suggest that millions of young people take drugs at the weekends and suffer less than they would from a heavy night in the pub. It is not OK to point out that no Ecstasy or cannabis-crazed madmen smash bottles in each other’s faces at closing time.

Anyone in authority even hinting at this these facts can expect the same bucketful of media ordure that was dumped on Mary Hartnoll in recent days. She says what worked best in the past was a scheme called Operation Eagle, which combined tough law enforcement against drug dealers by the police, a health promotion campaign with truthful information about comparative risks, and good youth clubs involving local adults. (By far the commonest drug was cannabis).So in the face of this widespread drug-taking, what kind of effective anti-drug warnings do you issue? “Just Say No” doesn’t work, but Miss Hartnoll says, “honesty matters if you want to be believed.”Now she is setting out to persuade her new council to adopt a practical and realistic approach. Six per cent were on heroin, 8 per cent on cocaine or crack – frightening numbers. But for the great majority taking soft drugs was a recreational social activity that did not interfere with their jobs or education. The “Leah Betts – Sorted” posters invite disbelief from a generation where millions take it every Saturday night without obvious bad effect.

She says a recent survey in Glasgow – the city with the most drug deaths, at 100 per year – found half the young women and two thirds of young men took drugs. Nothing like as dangerous as drink and tobacco, for instance, and three time more people die of paracetemol, while thousands more young people die driving their first car.Miss Hartnoll says the young know a great deal about drugs – though often not enough. He fears it may cause increased depression in later life, but as drugs go, E is “relatively safe”. There has never been a recorded death from cannabis, so prosecuting 56,000 people a year for it blurs the crucial difference between such “relatively safe” drugs and those which destroy not only their users, but also to the community around them.Miss Hartnoll was blasted for saying Ecstasy is “relatively safe”, but those words are used by most of the experts, including the man who collates most information on Ecstasy deaths, Dr John Henry of the National Poisons Information Service It is not safe, he says, for no widely used drug is safe. So the vital difference between “relatively safe” and extremely dangerous drugs disappears in a cold sweat of terror, as evidence and facts are cast aside.