FATHER'S PLEA AS WOMAN DIES AFTER INJECTING HEROIN

A young woman died after injecting heroin in the week the Government warned
that use of the drug among teenagers had reached epidemic proportions.

The family of Claire Campbell, aged 21, had no idea she was using the drug
until she collapsed at the weekend at the home she shared with her boyfriend
in Haywards Heath, West Sussex. She was unconscious for three days in the
town's Princess Royal hospital and died on Tuesday.

Yesterday Harry Campbell said his daughter, nicknamed Dinky, had hidden her
drug use from them. "She was outgoing but she was easily influenced and fell
in with the wrong company. A couple of weeks ago her twin sister Ingrid said
she was very worried about her. They had been very close since they were
little girls but Ingrid saw the people Dinky was with and decided she wanted
nothing to do with them."

When she was confronted by her parents' accusations that she had been taking
drugs, Ms Campbell denied it and told them not to worry.

Mr Campbell, a retired businessman, said his daughter had taken cannabis
when she was at sixth form college. "She had promised us she was having
nothing more to do with drugs and we believed her," he said. "Only two or
three weeks ago my wife Turid took her shopping and said how happy she was
that she had left all that behind her.

"She was bright and enthusiastic, telling her mother how much she had
enjoyed herself."

The Home Office report released this week said that more than a third of
teenagers experimenting with heroin were under 16 and it was being sold
aggressively to a new, young market as another recreational drug.

Mr Campbell said his daughter had lost jobs as a legal secretary and a
receptionist because of her absenteeism. "We now know that it was probably
all to do with the effects of drug taking but we had no idea what the
problem was, at the time she disguised it so well."

Last week when he and his wife visited her they noticed her dilated pupils
and her slow speech, but thought she had been taking sleeping tablets
prescribed by her doctor.

"She said she was coming home at the weekend but instead we got a phone call
from the woman in the flat below her telling us there was an ambulance at
the house and Dinky was being taken to hospital," he said.

"We were just about to have dinner but we dropped everything and raced to
her bedside. We stayed with her until doctors said they could not save her
and she died.

"Nothing can bring Dinky back to us and all we can hope now is that other
families can learn from this tragedy and do not have to suffer the anguish."

He urged parents to look for the tell-tale signs - sudden and inexplicable
mood changes, unnatural behaviour, dilated pupils and slurred speech - and
get help before it is too late.

Detective Sergeant Steve Tuffin, of Sussex police, said: "We are
interviewing a lot of people in the area who may have information about
Claire's death and where she got the drugs from.

"Her family are devastated by their loss. Her parents want her story to be
highlighted so it doesn't happen to anyone else's daughter."

Checked-by: (Matt Elrod)