KETAMINE addiction among children and young people is so serious in parts of East Lancashire that despairing parents are in “as dark a place as their children”, the Vicar of St Matthew’s, Burnley, the Revd Alex Frost, has said.
Fr Frost was the instigator of an investigation into Ketamine addiction carried out by BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 Investigates last week. The episode, “Generation K: Kids on Ketamine”, reported that the illegal Class B drug — intended for use as a powerful anaesthetic and horse tranquiliser — caused irreversible physical damage, particularly to the bladder. A low dose had a similar effect as alcohol. Users repeated the dose to maintain the sensation.
The drug could be bought for “pocket-money prices” and was rife in schools.
Fr Frost, who last month led a General Synod debate on encouraging working-class vocations (Synod, 28 February), began raising awareness of the seriousness of the situation among 11- to 24-year olds in Burnley, after a mother in one of his church groups broke down. She had been telling him about the effects that the drug was having on her 15-year-old daughter.
One mother tells the programme about how her 13-year-old daughter progressed from vaping, to cannabis use, to ketamine.
The daughter told the interviewer: “I didn’t want to do it, but everyone else was doing it. Then I did it again and again and again, every day. You can get it on Instagram. [The dealers] pull up outside in minutes.”
She became what her mother described as “dangerously out of control, absolutely raging, wanting to destroy everything”, and suffered from agonising stomach cramps (known as K-cramps). Her daughter was unable to eat and ended up being admitted to hospital. The mother asked in anguish: “How did I not know?”
Urologists at Burnley General Hospital and elsewhere are seeing 16- to 24-year olds with bladder symptoms so severe that they require either removal or procedures every few weeks to re-coat the bladder lining. The severity has “left some young people effectively living in nappies”, one consultant told the programme, and asks: “What will their life be in the future? It’s up to all of us to increase awareness about the problem.”
Contributors to the programme agreed that the dealers must be identified and stopped. Furious families, at a meeting in Colne Town Hall, challenged the Police, saying that officers were not doing anything beyond seizing vapes suspected to be spiked with the drug, and sending these off for testing.
Desperate parents who resorted to refusing their child admission to their house as a means to getting a protection order, found themselves arrested for neglect.
The Government are considering designating Ketamine a Class A drug, which could carry a life sentence for dealers. Opponents say that this could stop children asking for help, for fear of prosecution. Police representatives told the programme: “We can’t arrest our way out of ketamine.” One parent said: “You don’t know if you’re going to get that phone call saying he’s dead.”
Fr Frost, who runs a support group for affected parents, told the programme: “I’m doing my best. But there are limitations to what I can do.”
The File on 4 reporter Jane Deith asks the Director of Public Health, Bruce Laurence: “What does it say when Fr Frost and St Matthew’s Church are picking up the baton on this one?”
The Archbishop of York posted on social media: “Our clergy work across society to help communities in need. In this important programme, Father Alex Frost, vicar of St Matthew’s church in Burnley, raises awareness of Ketamine addiction in young children.”
The programme is available on BBC Sounds.
