AdvertisingHeroin victim's body used for campaign
The life of a 21-year-old university dropout who died after injecting heroin is to feature in an educational film warning schoolchildren of the dangers of drug abuse.
The 22-minute film, called Rachel's Story, tracks Rachel Whitear's descent from a university student to her death at a flat in Exmouth, Devon, after two years of drug abuse.
She was found dead on her father's birthday in May 2000 three days after suffering from a heroin overdose. Rachel's body was found kneeling on the floor of a bedsit in the position she had been in to take her fatal fix. The syringe was still in her hand.
The film was made after her parents, Mick and Pauline Holcroft, of Ledbury, Herefordshire, allowed photographs of Rachel's body to be used in the video.
The video stills have already prompted a media frenzy reminiscent of the poster cam paign that followed the death of Leah Betts from ecstasy in 1995 and subsequently the deathbed pictures of Lorna Spinks last May.
The Daily Mail justified its use of one of the most disturbing pictures from the video, saying: "The Mail understands that this picture of Rachel will shock many readers. We feel its use is justified if it saves just one life."
Previous campaigns using images of dead drug users have failed to halt the rise of drug use among young people.
Heroin and morphine were implicated in 43% of the 1,296 drug-related deaths during 2000, the last year on record, according to the national programme on substance abuse deaths.
Heroin deaths rose by one-third to 551. Some 27 people died after taking ecstasy, two-thirds more than the previous year.
Rachel, a former psychology and sociology student who excelled as a pianist and left school with 10 GCSEs, was the last person her parents thought would become a drug addict.
The video, which the family hopes will become a national educational resource, is to be released to secondary schools in Herefordshire later this year.
"It is quite horrific to look at pictures like that of your own daughter. It was a very difficult decision to make, but we thought that if we released the pictures we would be using her body to help others," Mrs Holcroft said.
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