'Depict the enjoyable side of drugs'

A controversial author claimed yesterday that teenage fiction should depict the pleasures of drug use.

Melvin Burgess said sophisticated youngsters would not be convinced by books in which addicts were only shown dying of overdoses.

Fiction had to be 'authentic' by showing the attractive side of taking drugs, he added.

Anti- drugs campaigners were appalled by his remarks last night. They accused the author, who won the 1997 Carnegie medal for Junk, a teenage novel portraying heroin addiction and prostitution, for encouraging drug use. They said drugtaking should never be depicted as the norm.

Mr Burgess's remarks came as he took part in a debate about children's fiction on Sky News. He said he did not set out to educate youngsters about drugs or sex because they were turned off when they were told what moral stance they should take.

He went on: 'If you're writing about drugs, you don't just want to write about everyone dying of heroin. You also want to write about the fact that there's a drug culture which people enjoy.

'You have to be straightforward about it because kids already know that kind of stuff.'

Mr Burgess said there was a need for fiction, particularly that written for teenagers, to be 'provocative'.

But Mary Brett, head of health education at Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, said the author was setting young people a bad example.

'Drugtaking isn't the norm,' she added. 'This is making it "normal" and kids latch on to this very quickly, especially kids who don't have all the facts about drugs. He's encouraging them and it's to be condemned.'

Peter Stoker, director of the National Drug Prevention Alliance, added: 'What he's missing out is the fact that it's a minority of people who get something out of drugs. Most of those who get something out of it for a short time then give it up.'

Mr Burgess's most recent novel, Doing It, which graphically details boys' sexual conquests and a nymphomaniac teacher, was condemned by education experts last year as 'pornography'.

Children's author Anne Fine called for the book to be pulped before it hit the shops.

The book was aimed at 16-year- olds but is likely to have attracted a much younger readership.

An earlier novel, Lady: My Life as a Bitch, aimed at readers aged 14 and upwards, was described as 'grossly unsuitable' for young readers with its themes of casual sex and drugs.