A parish priest said yesterday that parents were terrified their children could get caught up in what he called the poisoned culture of drugs. Father Frank O'Hagan was speaking during the Requiem Mass for 16-year-old Jason Brolly, who died in hospital last Monday night after taking ecstasy.
Hundreds of people attended the teenager's funeral in St Aidan's Church in Magilligan, Co Derry yesterday. Father O'Hagan said the death youth's parents, Maurice and Rosemary, and his sisters Tina and Sonya and brother Martin hoped that the first drugs- related death in the parish would also be the last.
"We are all very much aware of the circumstances of Jason's death. It has been highlighted a lot in the media and his own family have talked about it at quite some length," he told the mourners. "Some of you dear young people will know exactly what was talked about in those reports.
"Others of you will know only something of the kind of drug culture we are living in because you will have been told by your peers, even if you have never made any efforts to become directly involved in it.
"It is a culture which scares the life out of us adults, and we are frightened by the many influences that are putting pressure on you to become involved in that culture. You can see our fear and we hope today that our fears are now your fears. We hope that you will have gained something from this awful tragedy, because I fear if you haven't, then Jason will have died in vain.
"To the pedlars of this poison, both here and in the surrounding districts and anywhere that people might live in this kind of culture, the message is simple - stop now."