THE mother of a tragic teenager from York who died after breathing lighter fuel has welcomed Government moves to ban its sale to anyone under 18.

Margaret Sykes said she believed tightening the rules on the sale of butane lighter fuel would help prevent future deaths.

Her son, Christopher, was 17 when he died after breathing aerosol lighter fuel outside a supermarket in Foxwood, York, in 1996.Since then his mother has called for curbs on the sale of the products to young people - calls which were partly answered when the Government decided last year to ban sales to under-16s.

But Mrs Sykes, 43, of Raynard Court, Acomb, believed a ban extending to the under-18s, which the Government is expected to announce next month, could make a real difference.

"I think if the legal limit is 18 it may prevent it happening," she said, adding she hoped youngsters "would have a bit more sense about them" by that age.

"Hopefully this is going to prevent another death," she said.

She also wanted to see drugs counsellors being sent to speak to children as young as six and seven about the dangers of sniffing substances.

Mrs Sykes said ideally she would like to see all sales of lighter fuel banned, but accepted that was not possible and that other substances could be used in a similar way.

She spoke last year about the impact of her son's death to a group of youngsters at a solvent abuse night in New Earswick. She said her words had more impact on some of the young people than warnings from the police. "They need to know how it affects a family," she said.

Although talking about Christopher's death had been difficult for her she was prepared to play a similar role in future.A total of 339 people, two-thirds of them children, have been killed by solvent abuse in the last five years.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.