DANGER OF PLAYGROUND DRUG CULTURE

Biggest-ever study shows pupils getting hooked early as they ignore school
warnings, reports Amelia Hill

Children as young as 13 are starting to experiment with drugs and these
early users are more likely to move on to hard drugs such as heroin, the
biggest-ever survey of addicts reveals.

The study discovered a big gap between the onset of drug use as a child and
the point at which treatment is sought. Most addicts seek help only when
they reach 25.

'The survey reveals a picture of people who began use at 13 or 14 years and
were taking a mixture of drugs and alcohol and tobacco, not just cannabis,'
said Peter Martin, chief executive of Addaction, the charity which carried
out the study, 'Collecting the Evidence', to be published on Tuesday.

'By the time a young person does enter treatment with us, it will take so
much more to turn their lives around because they are so much more likely to
have lost their health, their education, job prospects and their potential
to lead balanced, useful lives,' he said.

The survey highlighted an absence of accessible treatment centres for young
people and a failure by school drug programmes in conveying their message to
children. 'There is still a huge amount of ignorance and stigma around drugs
misuse among those who have responsibility to care for children, right
across society, its educational institutions and public services,' said
Martin.

Chris was 13 when he first smoked cannabis. By 14, he had started drinking.
At 15, he took his first LSD tablet and when he was 17, he developed a
heroin addiction that would last 11 years.

'I have a good family,' said Chris, now 29. 'My father is an engineer and my
mum works at a chemist's. I started taking drugs because of peer pressure:
if I hadn't, I would have drifted away from my friends.

'Starting with drugs at 13-years-old made it much more likely that I would
end up on heroin,' he added. 'I never learnt healthy ways to deal with the
usual teenage angst. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing
with my life but heroin gave me loads of confidence.

'My body was so small at 13 that cannabis had the most dramatic,
hallucinogenic effect on me,' he said. 'As I grew up, I had to move on to
harder and harder drugs to get the same high.'

Chris believes that if he hadn't started experimenting so young, he might
not have taken drugs at all. 'I would have had more time discovering how to
live a drug-free life,' he said. 'I could have learnt to like life and to
take part in it. Now I've got nothing except a criminal record: no
education, no home, no friends. What sort of a life can I ever hope to
lead?'

The number of 13-year-olds taking drugs is a minority, but growing, says
Jenny McWirter, head of education and prevention at DrugScope, the centre
for drugs expertise.

'Drugs are so much part of the social landscape nowadays and the pressures
on 13-year-olds are so much greater, that they are increasingly likely to
turn to illegal substances to help them through the period,' she said.

Addaction's survey findings were backed by Professor Neil McKeganey, an
expert in drug misuse research at Glasgow University who recently completed
a survey for the Department of Health on drug exposure and use among young
children.

'Pre-teen illegal drug use is on the increase,' said McKeganey. 'By 13, the
numbers of children who have experimented with illegal drugs is over
one-third, with 20 per cent having tried hard drugs such as LSD, magic
mushrooms and ecstasy.

'But the belief that drug use is very largely the product of peer pressure
acting on passive young adolescents is almost certainly wrong,' he added.
'There is a complex dynamic in operation whereby children agree to try drugs
as a result of curiosity, attempts at persuasion and their own desire to
conform to the group.'

According to Addaction's survey, pre-teen illegal drug use is more common
among boys than girls, and becomes increasingly common as they get older. A
child who has someone in the family who uses illegal drugs is five times
more likely than their peers to have initiated drug use themselves.

McKeganey found that despite the growing numbers of pre-teen drug use, there
are still very few services to help such children. 'The service providers
felt the problem was increasing but it was not a problem they were directly
engaging with,' he said.

'Very few providers were aware of joint protocols between children's
services and drug treatment services in their area. At least half of those
we spoke to felt seriously under-equipped to meet the needs of pre-teen drug
users,' he said. 'I'm in no doubt that we need focused support services for
them.'

The survey was welcomed by independent campaigners who are fighting to
improve awareness of drugs among children. Glen Banks is founder and
co-ordinator of a new scheme in Northamptonshire that takes school pupils
aged between 12 and 18 into Wellingborough prison to speak to recovering
addicts.

'The age at which children are being introduced to hard drugs is getting
younger and younger,' said Banks. 'Children of 13 are doing far more than
smoking cannabis; most move quickly on to solvents and butane gas, and then
to ecstasy.

'It's not just troubled 13-year-olds who are taking hard drugs; drugs have
no barriers and we live in such a drug culture now that it's hard for a
youngster to resist the peer pressure to try ever harder things.'

Alastair Lang, chief executive of Drug Abuse Resistance Education UK, a
charity that works in 457 primary schools and three secondary schools
nationwide, has designed drug education classes for seven-year-olds.

'The secret of drug education is holding children off using drugs until they
have got through their teens, but the extent to which drugs are now
available means we have to start teaching them how to resist drugs from the
age of seven,' he said.