The mother of drug addict, Rachel Whitear, is giving her backing to a new campaign to help cut the number of drug-related deaths in the UK.

Pauline Holcroft, who released photographs of her 21-year-old daughter's corpse earlier this year.

She hoped the images would "break the cycle" which claimed her daughter's life.

The charity DrugScope has launched the campaign to highlight the dangers of injecting drugs such as heroin.

Breakfast talked to Roger Howard, the chief executive of DrugScope. He said:

"2,500 deaths in this country are drugs related: that's too many wasted lives."

We're dealing with some stark statistics, nearly 8,000 deaths in Western Europe are drugs related. 40% of those deaths take place in the UK. That's a huge number of wasted lives. We need to target drug injectors -- working through professionals, such as Doctors, nurses...we are trying to stop initiators of new stream of injectors...we say injectors shouldn't talk about injecting, and people should avoid initiators.

(To watch this interview click on the video icon on the top right hand corner of this page)

Britain has the highest number of drug deaths in Europe - of 7,266 deaths from overdoses of illegal substances across the European Union in 1999, 39% were in the UK.

Mrs Holcroft, of Withington, near Hereford, said: "When Rachel first used heroin she smoked it and at that time was very opposed to the idea of injecting. Some time later, she did however do so."

(To hear Mrs Holcroft click on Daniel Sandford's report on the top right hand corner of this page)

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