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Contact details for Debra:
Email: debra@talkingaboutcannabis.com
Tel: 07840 080424
PR for The Cannabis Diaries: Suzanne Martin Associates
E: Suzanne@suzannemartin.biz
Tel: 0207 524 7600
Publisher: Hammersmith Press Ltd, London.
www.hammersmithpress.co.uk

The Cannabis Diaries - A Mother's Struggle to Save Her Family
With a practical appendix with useful information for parents and users by Dr Zerrin Atakan, Consultant Psychiatrist, Institute of Psychiatry, London

The true story of how a teenager’s cannabis use nearly destroyed a family.

Debra Bell’s son took his first puff of cannabis at school. He was 14. As he sank into addiction, he began to lie and steal to fund a habit that began to consume his life, and that of his family.

Hammersmith Press:www.hammersmithpress.co.uk/thecannabisdiaries
Media: Suzanne Martin Associates
e:suzanne@suzannemartin.biz
tel: 0207 524 7600

The Daily Mail are serialising ‘The Cannabis Diaries’ on Saturday Feb 6 and Monday 8 Feb with an interview with William Bell on Tuesday 9 Feb 2010.

The Cannabis Diaries were originally published on the web-site www.talkingaboutcannabis.com, which Debra set up to help support and inform families who were struggling, like she was, with a cannabis user in their midst. After extracts were published in the national press in 2007, there was huge national, and international, response and acclaim. A parental action group was immediately formed to raise awareness of the growing problem of cannabis use among the young, and to lobby Government to help. The parents’ group became a limited company and registered charity. Cannabis was restored to its Class B legal status in January 2009.

Extracts from 'The Cannabis Diaries' from The Guardian Family Section March 17 2007 HERE

'The cannabis diaries of a mum whose family was torn apart by addiction' Daily Mail 22 March 2007 HERE

‘I cried when I read your Diaries in the Guardian. I cried for your son, for you and for the other members of your family. I also cried for myself and my son Fred, who died on 7th October 2004’

‘Thank you for going public with your story. My son was 14 too when he had his first joint at the church youth club, the vicar brought him home, that was the beginning. For years I watched my son destroy his life, cannabis became his God and we were tortured by his lies, deceit, abuse, theft, the list was endless. A good looking boy became a druggie with rotting teeth, his only focus was his next fix.’

‘Reading your Diaries was like reading my own story. My mother read them too, and for the first time ever she said she hadn’t realised what it must have been like for me and how well I’d coped. I’m a single mom and my mother always blamed me for my son’s problems. She gave me a hug and we both cried. I can’t thank you enough for setting up your website. My son also read them and went very quiet. I always tell him how much I love him when I drop him off anywhere and the next day I did so, and you know what? He said ‘me too, mom’ and I know he meant it. And all because of your Diaries. Thank William for me too. He isn’t a failure because through his story he has achieved so much’.

‘I'm sitting here in my office trying not to let my colleagues see the tears in my eyes after reading your diary. They are tears for you and your family and tears for what happened to my daughter’.