Initial Press and Public Reaction
The press reported that Betts' death was an example of the dangers of illegal drugs in general, and MDMA in particular. Her 45-year-old mother Dorothy May Betts had died of a heart attack in 1992, but, otherwise Betts was from a quite ordinary family; she lived with her father Paul Betts (an ex-police officer), her stepmother (a nurse) and her brother William, who was born seven years after her. The fact that her life reflected so many other middle-class families in Britain may have contributed to the sense of shock around the country after her death. It was suggested that the pill she had taken was from a "contaminated batch." Not long afterward, a major 1,500-site poster campaign used a photograph of a smiling Leah Betts (not a picture of her on her deathbed, as some sources claim) with the caption Sorted: Just one ecstasy tablet took Leah Betts. The campaign made no mention of the crucial role water intoxication played in her death. Anarchist punk band Chumbawamba responded with their own "anti-poster" reading Distorted: you are just as likely to die from eating a bay leaf as from an ecstasy tablet.
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