Hartlepool mum calls for festivals to take drug taking more seriously
Paula Houghton's son James died in 2013 at Leeds Festival
A Hartlepool mum is calling for festival organisers to take the issue of drug taking more seriously after the death of her son.
19 year-old James Houghton died after taking fatal amounts of ecstasy at Leeds Festival in 2013.
His mum, Paula, said: "My daughter lost her precious brother and the mum she knew and my husband lost his adored son and the wife he shared 27 years with. My beautiful and loving son died with no family or friends with him. Just gone.
"He was excited about his future and was so looking forward to having a great time at Leeds Festival. Whilst he was there he took MDMA, or ecstasy, and had an adverse reaction. He collapsed and was taken to the medical tent where he had cardiac arrest. The doctors tried to revive but he couldn't be saved.
"I'm still here just as loving to my family but I'm not complete. Devastated and heartbroken are overused words but they're the only words to describe the pain of losing your child. It'll be 11 years in August since we've had to live without our gorgeous James. The pain and sadness doesn't relent. It deepens and you just learn to live with it.
"How on earth organisers manage to get their health and safety submissions passed is beyond me. There's always a massive percentage of chance of death but the events go ahead regardless. There's big money to be made at music festivals and a bigger chunk of these profits should be paid to provide safety and education.
"I'd like to see a law that deaths due to illegal drug taking statistics are clearly given on advertising sites and literature including the ticket themselves, remind us about the risks associated with drug taking should be clearly displayed around the site and information about what to do in an emergency situation.
"I know there's been discussions about having testing stations for people to test the quality of what they're taking. James's toxicology report showed traces of various substances like aspirin and even ADHD medication, which had been added to the pills he took, so I can see a value in this type of service."
Paula has this message for parents whose children will be going to music festivals this summer: "I'd say sit with them now and do some research together. Educate yourself as much as you can. James and I were so close and had even had discussions about drugs. He had given me reassurances that he wasn't interested in taking them, and he wouldn't even take a paracetamol for a headache, but he still popped those ecstasy pills."
Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic, which runs the events in Leeds and Reading, said: "It'll be exactly the same this year in terms of the sniffer dogs, in terms of the the increase in security and in terms of the focus on the drug dealers and things like that and again, a big focus on the hubs that offer that opportunity of giving people support."
He added that they are taking steps to protect people with things like wellbeing hubs: "We're very much focussing on that because that was something that we learnt from and I think it's something that the festival goers understood and respected so we're very much on that.
"We're adding to the hubs for systems, information and response hubs that we rolled out last year into the campsites. We're creating a new sensory space."