Standing outside a rave in a grotty Nottingham warehouse, a girl I vaguely knew came up to me, jaw slack, eyes sparkling and smilingly slurred: “Go on Emma, just take one. It’s amazing.” For the umpteenth time at university I was about to refuse an ecstasy tablet. All because of another girl I’d never met and never would: Leah Betts.

The teenager, who died in 1995 after taking a single tablet at her 18th birthday party and drinking seven litres of water in 90 minutes, unwittingly became the anti-drugs poster girl for a generation, after her family allowed a powerful Polaroid of her on a life-support machine to be released to the press. It immediately went viral before such a phenomenon existed. The Betts family could never have imagined the frenzy of press attention and later, death threats from furious drug dealers, which would follow that decision. But they also couldn’t have imagined the impact sharing that photo would have on thousands of young people up and down the UK.

This week I had the chance to thank Paul Betts, now 70, for his action, when I interviewed him on my BBC 5 Live programme as part of a series we do on the show called Eye of the Storm – where people relive a moment in time when their name or personal experience was the talk of the nation.

It was an emotional moment telling him I’d never taken pills out of a fear of dying like his daughter, (we had to pause the interview while he fought back tears), but it was what he revealed about what happened to him since and how he would react differently today that made me realise what a debt my generation owe him and his nurse wife, Janet, Leah’s stepmum. (Leah’s own mother died before she did).

Mr Betts, a former police officer, doesn’t regret sharing the photo. “It was one of the best things that could’ve happened,” he told me. “We are still getting letters and messages from young people just saying thank you because they were not aware and that [image] brought it to their attention and because of that they have never done drugs, even though they’d watched their friends do it.”

He still feels this despite being forced to relocate to a remote part of the Highlands, (where they still live and own a croft), because they’d been put on a hit list by “a couple of big local drug dealers”. The reason? Janet and him had been so successful in their anti-drugs crusade with the press, their trade was declining. On one occasion Mr Betts was almost “rammed off the road”. As he calmly put it: “If you are successful in fighting against crime then you are a hit. As the old saying goes, ‘if you don’t want to get shot then don’t stick your head above the parapet’.”

But, and here’s the big but, he says that had the same fate befallen Leah today, he wouldn’t have shared the same photo because of the cruelty of social media – saying his wife just couldn’t have handled the bitchy and thoughtless abuse. This from a man who was hounded from his home.

Fast forward two decades, and ecstasy consumption is on the rise again in this country among those aged 15 to 34. According to the 2016 European Drug Report, it has surged in popularity in Britain over the past three years. Plus it’s now cheaper and stronger than Leah’s dose ever was. Which is why the brave action of Kerry Robinson, earlier this month, when she posted a photo of her 16-year-old daughter, also called Leah, on Facebook, in hospital fighting for her life after taking ecstasy on Christmas Day (an eerily similar shot to that of Leah Betts) should be applauded and highlighted. Again and again.

This time, this Leah survived.

Mrs Robinson’s daughter, now thankfully fine, didn’t talk to her for days after she realised the post had attracted the press’s attention. But think of all those parents who, unlike Mrs Robinson, self-censor these sorts of awful experiences out of fear of national pillory and death threats on social media. Who will shock the next generation out of their dancefloor temptations? Can anyone cut through the siren of today’s social media and fake news cynicism in the same way again? Perhaps not. Perhaps they won’t even try.

Twenty-one years on, we have nearly forgotten the girl who transformed so many people’s view of a party drug which defined the 90s and is now experiencing a resurgence. We can’t know how many people’s lives were saved or how many individuals never took pills because of Paul and Janet Betts’ selfless deed. They themselves, apart from the colossal pain of losing a daughter, have paid a huge personal price. But I, for one, can’t thank them enough. And I know I’m not alone.

• The full interview with Paul Betts can be heard on Emma Barnett’s BBC 5 Live morning programme, 5 Live Daily, today (Thursday) from 10am