ADDICT'S MOTHER BACKS DRUG PROJECT

Rachel's body lay undiscovered for three days A mother who allowed
photographs of her daughter's body to be published after she had died from a
heroin overdose is backing a campaign to prevent drug-related deaths.

Rachel Whitear was 21 when she died in May 2000 with a syringe in her hand.

Her body lay undiscovered for three days in a seaside flat in Exmouth,
Devon.

Her mother, Pauline Holcroft, of Withington, near Hereford, is backing a
DrugScope scheme to reduce the number of people injecting drugs.

The two-pronged scheme also hopes to educate existing drug users about safer
ways of taking them.

Mrs Holcroft told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "When we first discovered
that Rachel was taking heroin she was in fact smoking it.

"She was absolutely opposed to the idea of injecting at that time - so much
so that I wouldn't have possibly believed that she could start to do it -
but she did.

Story 'Not Unusual'

"I don't think that she could have done it without some sort of help... I
certainly wouldn't know how to go about that."

Overdose is the largest cause of death among injectors in the UK. And
addicts who inject heroin are about 14 times more likely to die than their
peers.

Mrs Holcroft said: "If somebody does overdose [this campaign will show] the
best way of dealing with it - not to be frightened of calling for help or
the consequences of it, how to deal with the casualty at the time."

She added that she did not regret releasing the photographs of Rachel,
despite attracting some criticism, and hoped the pictures would stop others
dying.

"I wouldn't say that shock tactics alone would work, we've never said this.

"But what happened to Rachel is the sad reality of what could happen to any
injecting addict, and I felt they needed to be seen.

"Rachel's story, sadly, is not unusual. It's just that she happened to have
a film made about her life."

Not 'Just Say No'

DrugScope's spokesman Harry Shapiro told the BBC the campaign was not simply
a call to "just say no".

"We are not just trying to stop people using drugs. This is a realistic,
more pragmatic approach.

"We are trying to persuade those people who are already injecting drugs not
to encourage others to do so.

"We are also giving out various pieces of advice to try and reduce
drug-related deaths such as not to mix substances like heroin and alcohol."

Rachel, who was once a promising student at Bath University, died after two
years of drug abuse.

The police photograph of her showed her body keeled over on the floor, with
bruised and discoloured flesh and a hypodermic syringe in her hand.