Campaigners yesterday criticised a kit which drug-takers can use to test substances as an irresponsible money-making venture.

Mr Dylan Trump, who is behind the scheme, claimed the kit would provide information to people using illegal drugs.

Mr Trump said the kit - which works by matching a drug sample with a range of colour codes for different substances - allowed users to be clearer about what they were buying.

Mrs Jan Betts, however, the mother of Leah Betts who died in 1995 after taking ecstasy on her eighteenth birthday, said Mr Trump's claims were ''complete nonsense'' and ''irresponsible''.

''Mr Trump is totally misinformed. The thing about ecstasy is that very few people die but it's the other effects that are the problem,'' she said, adding that it would be simple to devise a method of fooling the kit.

Mrs Betts, who now runs a helpline for drug-users with her husband, said she wholeheartedly endorsed comments by the Government-appointed drug czar, Mr Keith Hellawell, who said the kit was an ''immoral money-making venture''.

Mr Hellawell told BBC Radio 4 he would be taking the matter up with the Government. ''It's something we ought to stop before it starts,'' he said.

The kit was also criticised by the Glasgow-based anti-drugs group, Calton Athletic, which advocates complete abstinence from drugs.

Mr David Main, a spokesman for the group, said: ''It's not going to make any difference to know what you're taking.

''People will take drugs one way or another and I can't see too many people bothering to test things before they buy them.''

Mr Main said the kit was the equivalent of providing an operating theatre in a night club to deal with stab wounds rather than preventing people carrying knives.

Mr Trump, whose company acts as the UK distributor for a Dutch company, Spank Products, responded to the criticism by saying neither the kit nor its advertising encouraged drug use.

He added: ''We are encouraging people to test drugs not use more.''