Mother calls for ketamine to be made Class A after her son was killed (2024)

A heartbroken mother has called for ketamine to be upgraded to Class A after her award-winning 26-year-old student son was killed by the drug.

Clare Rogers, 47, believes the Class B party drug is more dangerous than people think after her sonRian Rogers died from a dose in April last year.

The midwife,from Atherstone, Warwickshire, has warned people of the powerful effects of the drug and the lack of support addicts receive.

She spent thousands of pounds sending her son to rehab and flushed his drugs down the toilet in a bid to stop his substance abuse.

But her son kept relapsing, with the abuse eventually causing Rian's bladder to shrink to the size of a toddler's.

A coroner said the dose which eventually killed him unluckily had a very high purity which was 10 to 20 times more potent than his usual dose.

He was discovered four days later in his en-suite bathroom of his shared house in Nottingham.

Ketamine, which can bought for the same price as a takeaway coffee, is said to be the dealers' drug of choice because its Class B status means less jail time than being caught with Class A drugs like cocaine, ecstasy or heroin.

The drug, often used at parties or festivals, has the false reputation of being safe, with many youngsters being unaware of its potentially fatal consequences.

Ketamine, which was upgraded from Class C to Class B drug in 2011, is used by vets as a tranquillizer for horses - and often dealers use an emoji of the horse when trying to sell it online.

The drug - dubbed 'ket' or 'K' - is most often snorted in powder and can cause people to feel separated or detached from their body or physical environment.

Clare is now fighting for more support to stop other youngsters like Rian, who became addicted while living alone in a flat in lockdown after using ketamine at music festivals, dying from taking the drug.

She told the inquest at Nottingham coroner’s court: 'I want to make other people aware of how dangerous this drug is. I am going to do everything I can because that’s what he deserved. He wouldn’t have wanted this', according to The Times.

Rian's father Mike Cavanagh was close to breaking down as he complained to the coroner that there was no help forketamine addicts.

He said his son had lived with them for nine months, had put on weight and was healthy. But they had found it 'really hard' after they couldn't get a therapist as there was none available.

Fiona Gingell, the coroner at his inquest, describedRian's death as an 'absolutely tragic loss of life' in someone who had a bright future in front of them.

Rian, who won two national awards for computer innovations at Jaguar Land Rover, had been on the NHS waiting list for treatment for his damaged urinary tract for so long that he began taking the drug as an anaesthetic to relieve his pain.

An invitation for his appointment arrived as his funeral was being arranged - 19 months after he was referred.

Heleft his job as an electrical technician with Jaguar Land Rover to become a computer technician. He had enrolled in a BSc course at Nottingham Trent University while working for financial services firm Experian.

Dr Stephen Morley, a toxicologist from University Hospital Leicester, told the inquestketamine users usually haveless than 100 nanograms per millilitre of blood to feel pleasurable effects.

He said levels above 200 would be enough to put a person to sleep, but Rian had areading of 3,212 - likely enough to cause him to stop breathing.

Ketamine users are rarely sure of how powerful the batch they are using is as it depends on how much cutting agents like chalk andtalcum powder are added.

DrMorley ruledRian's death was caused by an accident after he collapsed in the shower after unluckily taking an extremely powerful dose.

Rian's death from ketamine overdose comes after the high-profile death of Friends actor Matthew Perry, who died in his Hollywood hot tub after abusing ketamine in October.

The Hollywood multi-millionaire was found with3,000 nanograms of ketamine in his blood, described at the time as enough for a general anaesthetic.

In November Clare set up a petition, which now has 3,590 signatures, to reclassify Ketamine as a Class A Drug.

In it she writes: 'Rian's use initially started at festivals like many youngsters do.

'After the death of his best friend and then being on furlough from the Covid 19 pandemic his use escalated and he delved deep into addiction that he could not get out of.

'His mental health deteriorated, his bladder suffered, he was passing blood and chunks of his bladder lining, he was suffering excruciating K cramps and then the vicious cycle commences, taking the ketamine which has anaesthetic properties to deal with the pain.

'The reclassification of ketamine as a Class A drug would increase penalties for possession and distribution, potentially reducing its prevalence in our communities and saving lives.

'This change could deter potential users and send a clear message about the dangers associated with this substance.'

Data showed that one in four 16 to 24-year-olds have tried ketamine with one in 20 being regular users. Now families of Gen Ket - Generation Ketamine - have joined the call to change the classification.

Figures released in December showed Gen Z are now shunning drugs, with usage rates in students halving since the 90s as speed, cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis and hippy crack fell out of favour.

However an outlier in the data was ketamine with young adults now taking more of the drug than their previous generations. It waslogged at its highest ever level (3.8 per cent), up a fifth on 2020.

The Home Office may now consider upgrading the drug following the death of Rian, with urology surgeons raising the alarm after seeing a spike in so-called 'ketamine bladder'.

Ketamine causes the bladder to shrink, causing extreme pain and the need to urinate more often.

It can lead to drug users becoming incontinent so they have to wear pads to work, and start wetting their beds, carpets and furniture. Some even keep empty water bottles next to their bed so they can fill it with bloodied urine in the night.

Rian's addiction had caused so much damage he needed an en-suite bathroom at his shared house in Nottingham's Beeston district which he moved into on April 2, 2023.

Rian's former girlfriend Chloe, 26, from Tamworth previously told the Sun: 'I was in and out of hospital with horrible side effects, but I still couldn't stop.

'For Rian and me it started as a sociable, festival thing. But it escalated so quickly into the opposite, never leaving our flat.'

Chloe finally gave up the drug after being reliant on it for almost a decade.

Professor Adam Winstock, founder of research group the Global Drug Survey, said that while the risk of dying from a ketamine overdose is really low, the UK has been one of the leading users of ket for the last five to ten years.'

Record amounts of ketamine were seized by police and border forces in the UK in the year to March 2022, rising by nearly 900 per cent from 208kg to 1,837kg.

The usage is also on the rise, with one in 20 young people admitting to having taken ketamine, according to TimeOut.

It is most popular in the cities of Manchester and Bristol, with London also being one of the top spots.

While ketamine has a two-decades long history as part of rave and clubbing culture, its usage has significantly changed since the pandemic.

It used to be used as a drug to take at the end of a night out, but because during lockdown, people were looking for mind-altering experiences that were not an 'upper', they turned to the tranquilising effects of ketamine, an expert claimed.

Adam Waugh, of drug charity The Loop told TimeOut that ketamine is 'an anesthetic drug so it knocks people into a dissociative state' which 'could be desirable at home'.

The drug is also significantly cheaper than other drugs used in the rave scene, at around £20 a gram compared to £40 a gram for MDMA and £100 for cocaine.