The tragedy of Rachel: A 22-minute video that gave pupils a shock lesson in drug use

"If anyone ever pushed me to take drugs then I would think back to that picture, of her dead on the floor looking like that," said George Thompson, 14, gesturing at the television screen behind him.

"It just shows what can happen," added 14-year-old Anthony Humphrey. "Taking drugs is not just about having a good time. I'm not sure what happened to her arms, they'd gone all black, I don't know if that's what happens when you take heroin but it makes you think." His voice trailed off as he recalled the image of the dead girl.

Yesterday afternoon, the pupils aged 14 and 15 at John Masefield High School in Ledbury, Herefordshire, became the first children to use a controversial new anti-drug video in a drug education lesson.

Called Rachel's Story, it is about Rachel Whitear, a girl only eight years the pupils' senior who also grew up in Hereford, just 15 miles away, and left school for Bath University.

But this was not going to be an uplifting careers lesson about a local girl made good. It is a hard-hitting message that includes disturbing pictures of Rachel's corpse.

Rachel died of a heroin overdose aged 21 in May 2000 and her body lay undiscovered for three days. Her story became part of the national debate about drugs education when her parents released the shocking police photographs of their daughter's blackened and crumpled body.

The photos showed Rachel slumped forward on the floor with the syringe that she had used to administer her fatal last dose still in her hand. Rachel's parents allowed the images to be included in the video, saying they wanted to warn other young people how taking drugs could wreck their lives.

Given the publicity surrounding the 22-minute video, there was little surprise that many of the 28 children in yesterday's lesson appeared apprehensive and subdued when Ann Duff, the school's deputy head and drug education expert, prepared to start the film.

The film might have had extra poignancy for them because Rachel's parents used to work at their school ­ her stepfather Mick Holcroft as caretaker and her mother Pauline as a classroom assistant ­ and the couple still live in the town.

The story started with images from Rachel's seemingly idyllic middle-class childhood ­ pictures of her posing with a puppy, playing the piano, laughing in a swim suit and hugging her stepfather.

But as it charted Rachel's descent into heroin addiction the students were totally absorbed in her story. Some put their hands over their mouths or faces as if in disbelief. When it ended ­ after six seconds of shots of the photos taken by the police who found her body ­ there was a stunned silence, which lasted at least a couple of minutes. Most of the class appeared moved while one or two wiped their eyes.

When Miss Duff restarted the lesson by going around the room asking each student for their immediate comments on the video, several simply expressed the shock they felt at the sight of the images.

Louise Newby, 14, said: "It was horrible when they showed those pictures. It was such a shock.''

"I thought it was scary, really," added 14-year-old Carol Homer.

But the students were divided over whether Rachel's Story held any lessons for them. Some simply could not imagine being 21 and facing the choices Rachel had to deal with.

Kate Browning, 14, said: "Because she was 21 and we do not have any experience of going through that age, it's not really something that we can relate to."

Her classmate Danielle Hawkins disagreed, saying: "I think that anybody can relate to her story because we all have choices." But what united them was their complete amazement that someone with 10 GCSE passes and offers of places at six universities should have become a heroin addict.

Rachel became a drug user after she started dating an older boy just after her 18th birthday. Her parents later discovered her boyfriend was a heroin user. She took up a place at Bath but dropped out after her first term and moved to the Devon bedsit where she was found dead.

Tom Ivey, 15, said: "We are just starting out on our GCSEs and thinking what we're going to do with our lives. Here is someone with ten GCSEs ­ now to us that's really quite an impressive number ­ who just threw it all away. Those GCSEs are just gone. She won't do anything with them now."

Critics of the video have questioned whether it heralds a return to using shock tactics in drug education. They argue that young people need the straight facts about drugs rather than the "Just Say No" and "Heroin Screws You Up" campaigns.

They have also queried whether middle-class Rachel is representative of a heroin user. A recent study showed that nationally only 2 per cent of people aged 16 to 18 had used heroin, but that 16 per cent of the age group who lived in hostels were heroin users.

Others argue that children are now more streetwise and more likely to be exposed to drugs than adults appreciate. A recent government study recently concluded that almost one in three 15-year-olds had tried illegal drugs.

The Department for Education and Skills is to make Rachel's Story available to all children from 10 upwards as part of a new anti-drug initiative in schools.

It will be used in 20 Herefordshire schools from next week and in schools across the country from next year. Liam Kernan, Herefordshire's drug education officer, who compiled the teaching pack that accompanies the video, denies that Rachel's story uses shock tactics and argues that there is much more to the video than a couple of disturbing photographs.

He said: "I have seen that video coming up for 100 times and it never fails to move me.

"Shock tactics do not work. I know that. We are definitely not saying if you do heroin you will end up lying dead on the floor looking like this. But we felt that including the police pictures of Rachel added something and told you how her story really ended. It's just six seconds in a 22-minute video. We knew that it was a slightly shocking element but there are lots of other elements in there.''

Miss Duff, the teacher who allowed The Independent to sit in on her lesson yesterday, agreed that seeing the video in one sitting could be shocking. The school plans to show Rachel's Story over three weeks to lessen the shock and give students more time to discuss the issues. She said: "There is just so much within this video. It's like an onion with layers. I have seen it four times myself now and each time you see something different.

"Ideally you need to show it a little bit at a time. You have to give students time to reflect, assimilate and question what they have seen.

"I feel very strongly that this is a very powerful video that has got to be used in a responsible way. That means not just playing the tape and raising all these issues in students' minds just before the bell goes and sending them off without proper discussion of what they are feeling."

Chris Tweedale, the headteacher, agreed. "As long as the video is used sensitively and not as a shock tactic and used as part of an ongoing personal and social education programme, then I believe it will be a very useful part of our curriculum."

While finding the video shocking, the students who watched the story of Rachel's brief life yesterday did not believe it would have had the same impact without the use of the controversial pictures.

Mary Simons, 14, said: "I thought the whole video was shocking, not just the end. If you hadn't seen the pictures at the end then it wouldn't have had such a dramatic finish. I think it was the right way to finish.''