A woman who allowed her teenage children to smoke cannabis at home faces Eviction and the sack from her job. She had let the children smoke at home, she said, because she did not want them to take heroin on the streets as some of their contemporaries were doing.
Jane Wakeman, aged 41, from Utoxeter in Staffordshire, was arrested in April when six police officers raided her home after what they said was a tip-off. Her 15-year-old son was found with a cannabis joint in his hand. Mrs. Wakeman was arrested and charged with possession of 1.6 grms of cannabis and allowing her home to be used for drug taking.
At Stafford magistrate's court last month, she was sentenced to two years probation for the two offences.
The case was reported in the local press, as a result Mrs. Wakeman has been suspended from her job as a receptionist at East Staffordshire Council and faces disciplinary proceedings that could result in her dismissal. She has worked for the council over a period of 20 years.
She has also been informed that she has one month to quit her home which is council owned. The grounds for the eviction are that she allowed the house to be used for drug taking.
"Heroin is rife here" said Mrs. Wakeman yesterday. "Some of my childrens schoolfriends had become addicted and when they told me about it I was terrified, I knew cannabis was a lot safer and I would rather have it under my roof".
She said she felt that if the children were at home with their friends they were safer than they would have been on the streets.
Mrs Wakeman said she accepted that she had broken the law and had to be punished, but she now faced the loss of her home and her job for possession of the amount of cannabis over which most police forces deliver a caution. She had no previous convictions of any kind.
"The only other people I know who have been evicted over drugs were heroin and cocaine dealers who had been to prison said Mrs Wakeman. She was uncertain of where she and her children would be able to live after the eviction.
She is separated form her husband.
Simon Kirkham of Release, the drugs advice agency, said "this does seem grossly unfair, This is a triple jeopardy: She is punished by the court and then with the possibility of loosing her home and her job.
Mr Kirkham said he would have expected such a case to have been punished with a caution or a conditional discharge. There were cases where people were required to leave their homes because of drugs, he said, but the people concerned were either convicted dealers or the subject of a series of complaints by neighbours of their drug dealing activities.
The case raises the issue of criminal responsibility for parents who allow their children to use cannabis at home.
A spokesman for East Staffs said it was the councils policy not to comment on such a case because it was regarded as an internal matter.
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