Observer, The; London (UK) (Mar 29, 11:32 AM)  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 finds a big gap between first 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 behind 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 highlights 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 smoked cannabis. By 14, he was drinking. At 15, he took his first LSD tablet. 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 hadn't started experimenting so young, he might not have taken drugs at all. 'Now I've got nothing except a criminal record: no education, no home, no friends. What sort of a life can I 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 McKeganeyof 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,' McKeganey said. '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. A child who has a user in the family is five times more likely than their peers to have initiated drug use themselves.

McKeganey found very few services to help child drug users.

'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.'

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

'The age at which children are being introduced to hard drugs is getting younger and younger,' he said. '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 that it's hard for a youngster to resist peer pressure to try ever harder things.'

Alastair Lang, chief executive of Drug Abuse Resistance Education UK, a charity working in hundreds of schools, has designed 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.