Pubdate: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 Source: Wales on Sunday (UK) Copyright: 2006 Trinity Mirror Plc Contact: http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3763 Author: Lucy Ballinger, Wales on Sunday Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth) SCHOOLKIDS IN DRUG DEALING SHOCK AN ALARMING number of schoolchildren have been arrested for drug-dealing in Wales, we can reveal. At least 64 under-15s have been quizzed by cops in the past two years for supplying narcotics from cannabis to heroin in our villages, towns and cities. The real picture is almost certainly more shocking because just three of the four Welsh police forces could provide Wales on Sunday with figures. Between April 2003 and March 2005, South Wales Police arrested 43 youths for peddling drugs. Dyfed Powys had the second highest number, arresting 18 children under 15. Gwent arrested three under-15-year-olds. North Wales Police could not provide figures. Earlier this month two pupils were expelled from a school in Cardiff after staff discovered youngsters had been in possession of drugs. The teenagers were excluded from Y Pant Comprehensive School in Talbot Green, and another two suspended, after an internal investigation discovered pupils with class C drugs. Last month, an 11-year-old girl from Glasgow was hospitalised after taking heroin. Reports said the girl told doctors she had been smoking heroin for more than two months. Youth worker Harry Fisher, of the Swansea Drugs Project's special young person's service Sandpit, said heroin was readily available to youngsters. He said: "Heroin is so accessible in Swansea, if you are under-16 in the town you would be able to get it. "Obviously, if heroin is getting more accessible to younger and younger people the prognosis doesn't look that good for the next few years as to younger people getting involved in it. "And certainly among 14 and 15-year-olds cannabis is going to be an issue. For young people it is just so common, it's not different to tobacco for a lot of young people." But the youth worker warned the term 'dealing' could be misleading. He said: "You get the situation where one person will get some drugs and then give them out to their friends - technically dealing." But an ex-drug addict, who has asked to remain anonymous, said children could start dealing drugs for this very reason. The former user, who started taking drugs in his early teens, said: "Being a dealer gives you instant popularity, all of a sudden everyone is your friend. "Sometimes there is an edge of feeding the addiction when people turn to dealing drugs. As if you do deal then you get your own supply free or at the least a lot cheaper." And the former addict said he believed drugs were now much more accessible to children. "In my later years of using, I was coming across more and more kids who were using and doing a lot more a lot quicker than I was at that age. "There is a glaring increase in the number of youths using drugs. They are more accessible, which means that where there used to be a couple of kids into it in schools, now it seems like blanket saturation." In 2003, a survey of 15 and 16-year-olds across 35 countries by the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs found in Britain, 38 per cent of boys and 21 per cent of girls had used cannabis, and nearly one in 10 teenagers said they had tried illegal drugs other than cannabis. These figures are both well above the European average. Last night, the National Assembly's Social Justice Minister Edwina Hart said it was not a devolved issue and refused to comment. A spokesman for the Home Office said: "A young people and drugs delivery plan is being implemented by the Home Office with the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health. "This ensures that improved universal targeted and specialist drugs services are developing for children and young people. "National education and prevention initiatives will be set-up such as the Frank campaign, Blueprint and Positive Futures." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom