Around 1000 children are caught with drugs in Scotland every year.
The figure, the most robust yet on addiction among the very young, came out yesterday as a high-profile report suggested some illegal substances could be harmless.
The data revealed, for the first time, the number of youngsters referred to the children's hearing system for possessing drugs. The Scottish Children's Reporter Administration (SCRA) said there were 983 such offenders in 2005-2006, 982 in 2004-2005, and 1015 in 2003-2004.
The figure has been high in recent years, say experts, partly because of the number of children in families where drug use is commonplace.
Professor Neil McKeganey, of Glasgow University's centre for drug misuse research, said quite young children were increasingly using cannabis and more serious drugs.
"We have around 50,000 children in families where one or both parents are addicted to illegal drugs. If you add in older siblings and uncles and aunts, there are probably as many as 150,000 children who have close family members involved in illegal drugs."
Like many of the rest of Scotland's most troubled and troublesome children, those involved in drug use are highly likely to have been referred to the hearing system on welfare grounds long before they started offending.
The SCRA said 1426 children were referred to the system last year because of welfare concerns over drink or drug misuse. That figure has also remained consistently high: it was 1369 in 2004-2005 and 1611 in 2003-2004.
Graeme Pearson, head of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, believed young drug users are often supplied by people their own age.
He called for Scotland to stick with the executive's three-pronged attack on drugs - focusing on health, education, and enforcement. The number of problem drug users, he said, had slipped from 55,000 to 51,000.
He questioned the findings of a major report yesterday from the Royal Society for the Arts after a two-year study.
The society argued that not all drug abuse was problematic and claimed that much of Britain's current drugs policy was based on "moral panic". It recommended focusing drugs policy on harm reduction and called for safe places where addicts could inject.
Professor Anthony King, who chaired the society commission, said: "The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others.
Mr Pearson said: "It is not our experience of the problematic 51,000 drug abusers and their familiesthat use of illicit substances can be harmless."
Professor McKeganey said: "The need now is to focus first and foremost on drug prevention and to recognise that we will only reduce drug-related harm when we are successful in reducing the numbers of young people using illegal drugs."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article