| Accident and emergency consultant Neil Nichol, based at the hospital, made the shocking revelation today in the wake of news an 11-year-old Glasgow girl collapsed after taking heroin.
She reportedly bought it from a dealer outside a shopping centre in the Pollok area of Glasgow.
She is said to have been smoking the drug for more than two months, but authorities were alerted only when she fell ill during lessons at a primary school.
Mr Nichol said that in the most recent case a baby just a few months old came in to Ninewells A&E department after swallowing methadone, a drug prescribed to addicts in an effort to wean them off heroin.
Other babies had been treated in the department after taking methadone but it was not a common occurrence.
Very young children are now being brought up in households where drug taking is “normal” behaviour and gain access to drugs like ecstasy with apparent ease.
“We see kids in the five to 10-year-old range who take tablets out of mum’s bag or find them about the house,” said Mr Nichol. “They are taking ecstasy or other drugs like that.”
He acknowledged the facts would be shocking to many people. “You or I can’t get our heads around the incredible stupidity of what is, sadly, normal behaviour in large parts of the population,” said Mr Nichol.
“In some areas leaving ecstasy around is now seen just like leaving a can of beer about.”
He said very small children coming in to the accident and emergency department at Ninewells after taking ecstasy wasn’t a common occurrence.
“We maybe see two or three a year,” he said.
He could not recall having seen a young child after taking heroin but 15 and 16-year-olds did arrive in the department after taking the drug.
He said the problem was that parental responsibility for such children was “nil” and the consultant was concerned that not only is the current generation of children learning behaviour from their drug-taking parents, but they could then go on to teach their own children, creating a third generation of drug abusers.
Mr Nichol said when a child came in to the department having collapsed after taking drugs, the vast majority recovered from the particular episode but the concern was for their future.
“Although they may get over the acute medical episode, if they have access to drugs like that in the home setting, their learning of appropriate social behaviour and how to look after children is clearly severely lacking,” said Mr Nichol.
“The great worry is they go on to repeat that behaviour with their own children.” |
