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BBC News Online: Health

Monday, 6 March, 2000, 23:24 GMT

Picture of unhealthiness

This haunting image of a young girl imitating her mother smoking a cigarette has won a competition staged for National No Smoking Day.

Photography student Alex Handley, 31, said the power of his image proved such a shock he quit the habit on the spot.

When I developed the picture it really shocked me. It made me realise the one thing I never wanted to see was either of my children smoking
Alex Handley

The photo shows his wife, Tracy, smoking a cigarette while helping son Matthew, 20 months, use an asthma inhaler.

Next to her on the family's sofa three-year-old Ella sucks on a pencil as if it is a cigarette.

Mr Handley, 31, from Leeds, said: "When I developed the picture it really shocked me. It made me realise the one thing I never wanted to see was either of my children smoking.

"I thought this made me a bit of a hypocrite as I still smoked, so I as good as gave up on the spot."

The competition, run ahead of Wednesday's National No Smoking Day, asked photography students to submit entries illustrating one of a series of smoking themes, including changing attitudes to smoking and giving up.

Mr Handley said that although the photo was partly staged - Tracy does not smoke and he had been banished to the garden for cigarettes since Matthew was diagnosed with asthma - it made him think.

"It made me realise how easily children can imitate people around them. Nobody consciously chooses to start smoking, they do it because of a combination of peer pressure and what they get used to seeing around them," he said.

Second prize went to 18-year-old Victoria Rathbone, for a similarly haunting photo of a young girl smoking.

Related to this story:
Anti-smoking drive targets clubs (29 Feb 00 | Health)
Toxic cigarette ingredients revealed (13 Feb 00 | Health)

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