Opinion: Using star's legacy for good

Heath Ledger as the Joker, in the Batman movie The Dark Knight.

Heath Ledger was a good looking and talented actor, father and son who seemingly had it all. Yet he died, as too many do, far too young.

And, as his dad Kim told our reporter Rebecca Malcolm, it was all down to a tragic mistake made by a "cavalier" young man living a busy, slightly chaotic life.

Many people die every day who are not famous so we rarely hear their stories. Some will have died in the same way as Heath Ledger.

But inevitably when a celebrity dies, there is a fascination with everything about it. How, where, when, why it happened are all immediately speculated upon and every detail reported.

While that has its downsides, such as loss of privacy and sometimes inaccurate and hurtful rumours, there will often be the opportunity for a star's public profile to be used for good even after they are gone.

Kim Ledger is taking that opportunity, just as he believes his son would have done had the roles been reversed.

Mr Ledger has become the patron of ScriptWise in the Ledgers' home country of Australia, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to prevent prescription medication misuse and overdose fatalities.

He will today address delegates of the Cutting Edge Addiction Conference in Rotorua, sharing the benefits not only of his personal experience of losing a child to an accidental prescription drug overdose but the research he has since carried out.

He says addiction to prescription drugs and the accidental mixing of those drugs, as happened with his son, are massive issues that need to be talked about. He wants to help raise awareness, to stop other families going through the pain his has.

There can be a casual attitude around prescription drugs - if they are legal and prescribed by a doctor then surely they can't be too harmful, right?

Wrong. And Mr Ledger and the other experts at this week's conference are to be commended for their efforts to put that myth to rest.