Martha Fernback, 15. died from taking 91% pure ecstasy. Anne-Marie Cockburn is campaigning for drug legalisation to spare others her ordeal.
On 17 July 1971 the US president, Richard Nixon, announced what has become known as the war on drugs, instigating an unrelenting campaign that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. On the same date, 42 years later, in north Oxford, Martha Fernback, 15, and a friend bought a plastic sachet holding a crystallised gram of MDMA for £40 from a dealer. It was no impulse buy. Martha's online history revealed she had meticulously researched the risks of the drug and opted to buy its most expensive variant, assuming the better quality it was, the safer it would be. One of the myriad ramifications of Nixon's hardline stance has meant buying drugs is a fraught and risk-laden business: users do not know what they are taking. In Martha's case better quality meant greater purity. She had no idea that her batch was 91% pure compared with an average street level of 58%. Around lunchtime on 20 July last year Martha swallowed her 0.5 gram and within two hours was dead, the MDMA inducing cardiac failure.
