Heartless dealers continued to send messages to Adam Cowell advertising their drugs even after his death from a cocaine overdose.

Adam’s access to the Class A drug was ‘24 hours a day’ his mother Andrea Adamson has revealed to the Observer, and he would walk just three minutes from his home in Oswaldtwistle to buy cocaine.

From investigating his mobile phone after his death, Andrea found that he was regularly receiving bulk ‘advertising’ texts from dealers and said that police need to crack down on the ‘blatant’ drug trade in the borough.

She said: “It needs stopping on the streets, it’s so freely and widely available.

“I know from what I saw on Adam’s phone the day he died he got that cocaine within three minutes walking from where he lived.

“He was still getting block messages from dealers advertising what they have got for sale that weekend. These text messages were coming through after he passed away and it was always the same names. The police have had it and given it back to me. They said it’s not evidence, it’s ‘intelligence’.”

Despite his family’s best efforts, nothing they could do stopped Adam accessing cocaine, which he would buy under the pretence of going out to purchase a lighter. Andrea said: “His dad slept on the landing all night on the floor to stop Adam going out of the bedroom to go and get some cocaine.

“But the fact was that he could get the stuff day and night within minutes. We could sit with him for 23 hours and 59 minutes but that one minute we’d leave it he’d get it because that’s how easy it was.”

Andrea added that drug-dealing is ‘rife’ in Hyndburn, and she even witnessed a drug deal take place between two cars outside the gates of Rhyddings school on the day of Adam’s inquest in May.

She said: “A drug deal went off in front of our fence in broad daylight. One driver rolled down the window and a package went through the other window. My neighbour’s daughter, she’s five said ‘look at them sharing’. I could not believe what I was seeing. They didn’t even try and hide it.”

Although Andrea reported the incident to the police, it emerged that both cars were registered with false plates.

She added: “I know for every one that they catch probably two will pop up because it’s that rife, but unless some of these dealers are seen to be dealt with by the police it’s not going to be frightening anyone off selling drugs.”