'He had heart pains, his blood pressure was all over the place, his body went numb. Then he went into a bout of intense depression and suicidal tendencies. We were very, very scared. We thought that maybe we were going to lose him. It was a terrifying situation.'

Last week a friend and colleague feared that his son was going to die, after the 19-year-old collapsed in front of him following a heavy weekend taking the killer 'party drug' mephedrone.

Not knowing how to stop his son's addiction and having been told by mental health experts that their son's drug taking is a 'lifestyle choice' which they can do little about, in desperation he bravely rang BBC Radio 4's Today programme and has since given a round of media interviews with the Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail and ITV.

'They said they were not able to offer us any assistance, apart from saying, if necessary, take him to accident and emergency. There has been an offer of acupuncture sessions but no mention of rehabilitation or even counselling.'

Here in Cambridge, a report by a student newspaper claims that eight per cent of students have tried the drug known by names such as 'meow meow' and M-Cat. It is also reported that education officials in Gloucestershire claim children as young as 13 are taking the drug. Although it is derived from the illegal drug cathinone, it remains legal because it is not listed under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

An official report into the drug by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs was delayed after the government sacked its top adviser Professor David Nutt last October, which led to the resignation of five other members of the Council, throwing its work into disarray. Meanwhile, teenagers Louis Wainwright and Nicholas Smith died earlier this month after taking the 'legal high'.

‘It is all very well for politicians and doctors to say we do not know the effects of this drug,' my friend has said, 'but as parents we can see this happening in front of us and our views have to be listened to.’ He suggests that the government should follow countries such as the United States and Germany, which ban any legal highs that come on to the market for a year to allow scientists to evaluate them.

'I'm not naive enough to think it will not still be there. It will go underground but it will become more expensive and it will put some children off taking it if it is illegal.'

His son adds, 'Something needs to happen. People are doing the drug who would never think of doing illegal drugs. It is affecting normal people. It is so readily available, a phone call away. And it is so cheap that someone always has it. You can swap a cigarette for a line. And that makes it hard to break away from it.'

The problem is that government in a liberal democracy can have no more than a minimal capacity for good or ill to affect behaviour, precisely because it is held that each person has freedom and capacity to make their own choices. However, as in other areas relegated to the category of 'lifestyle choices', such an attitude actually amounts to an abdication of responsibility.

I am reminded of questions that Dale Kuehne asks towards the end of his book: Can this level of individualism and freedom provide an effective, sustaining, long-term societal structure? Does it possess enough coherence to continue to hold itself together, or will its citizens, in their individual pursuits, find themselves diverging ever further from any shared interests with their fellow citizens? Will it be able to avoid the social, societal, and political fragmentation that would lead to its disintegration? Will its devotion to virtually boundless personal freedom without regard for possible consequences be its undoing? How long can such a world be sustained?

These are not merely questions for philosophers speculating whether our post-modern age will culminate in anarchy or totalitarianism. These are questions for all of us, parents, colleagues and friends alike, as we seek to understand what it means to love our neighbour as ourselves.

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