A BRAVE mother whose son died from an overdose of the heroin substitute methadone says he would be alive today if addicts had not abused the system.

Niamh Astles-Noone, a Lancashire Constabulary solicitor who lives at Langho, lost her 16-year-old son Gareth to methadone just over 18 months ago.

Since his death she has backed the Life Education Trust's campaign to send mobile teaching units into Lancashire schools.

And this week she congratulated East Lancashire coroner Andre Rebello on his "brave comments" about the problem of inadequately trained family doctors distributing methadone to addicts.

She added: "I completely support Mr Rebello's statement that methadone is being sold on the streets - to naive youngsters like Gareth. As he says, it should be safely dispensed to the people it is intended to help instead of it being allowed to hit the streets.

"If this had been the case a couple of years ago, I doubt very much that Gareth would have died. At his inquest Mr Rebello said he was a naive user and the amount of methadone he had taken would not have killed a heroin addict. I am determined to fight on. I don't want his death to have been in vain.

"Medical staff say the system cannot change because there are too many methadone prescriptions to write. But the number of deaths from methadone has shocked me. The problem needs tackling. "

Niamh has now called for Blackburn MP and Home Secretary Jack Straw to take up Mr Rebello's comments and seek a Royal Commission to bring all the relevant agencies together.

She added: "Everyone needs to work together to solve this problem - police, politicians, doctors and drug workers. It can't be done alone."

Coroner Andre Rebello has uncovered the true scale of the area's methadone problem - revealing that it results in two deaths a week in Lancashire.

Mr Rebello, Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley coroner, has vowed to question GPs about methadone deaths and fight for addict services to be controlled by US-style specialist clinics.

Four coroners attended this week's press conference. They called for qualified pharmacies to distribute methadone and put an end to the drug being prescribed in pint bottles.

Mr Rebello said he would, in future, try to trace the source of methadone that led to a death and call the doctor who prescribed it to give evidence and an explanation for distributing it in a way which allowed it to be sold on.

A priest who works with drug addicts on a daily basis has welcomed Andre Rebello's comments but believes they are not the answer to the problem.

Father Jim McCartney, who runs St Annes Drop-In Centre in France Street, Blackburn, says more money should be pumped into creating better facilities for drug rehabilitation programmes.

He said: "Mr Rebello is talking a lot of sense and controlling how Methadone is administrated is a step in the right direction. But from my experience of meeting addicts on a daily basis, methadone can be more addictive than heroin and at the end of the day does not solve the problem.

"Because methadone is legal and free it stops these people turning to a life of crime to pay for heroin. However the answer is to help them turn away from drugs altogether. The way to do this is to set up detailed rehabilation programmes."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.