Girl, 11, treated for heroin

GLASGOW - An 11-year-old girl who collapsed at school is being treated for the effects of heroin.

The child, from Glasgow, is the youngest person officially confirmed to have suffered from the effects of the drug, other than babies who suffer withdrawal symptoms from a mother's addiction.

The girl, who has not been named, told doctors she had been smoking the drug for more than two months. Social services and police have launched an investigation as reports said that the child has admitted buying £10 ($25) bags of the class A drug from a female dealer at a shopping centre.

A source close to the case told the Sunday Mail: "Initially the teachers thought that she had unwittingly taken drugs somehow. It turned out to be far from the truth."

Alistair Ramasay, director of Scotland Against Drugs, said: "There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting there are children of this age taking heroin, but this is the first incident that has been confirmed.

"We need to make sure that we find ways of targeting young people at risk of drugs, which should not be a witch-hunt against all 11-year-olds. We have trained more than 5000 primary and secondary teachers across Scotland to deal with situations like this.

"We also produced a game for 6-year-olds, which has been distributed to 160,000 children, called Stepping Stones. It gives parents the skills to tackle drugs education, teaching children never to take other people's medicines or asthma inhalers and how to keep themselves safe.

"Drug use is an emotive issue ... This girl's social circumstances must be looked at carefully."

- INDEPENDENT