AN 11-YEAR-OLD girl who collapsed in school was being treated in hospital yesterday for heroin addiction.

Strathclyde Police said that they were investigating how the child, who has not been identified, became a drug addict.

She was taken ill during class at her primary school last Wednesday. She told doctors that she had been “chasing the dragon” — burning heroin and inhaling it through a straw — for more than two months, according to the Sunday Mail.

The girl said that she had bought the drug in £10 bags from a female dealer at the Pollok Shopping Centre on the south side of Glasgow.

Health workers expressed astonishment yesterday and said that, with the exception of babies born to drug-addicted mothers, they could not recall a case of someone so young being an addict. Glasgow City Council has also started an investigation.

Despite her condition, the girl is believed to have tried to leave hospital on Thursday, only to be stopped by staff.

The girl’s parents, accompanied by social workers, are understood to have visited her on Friday.

Experts said that the girl would have to go “cold turkey” — the process of withdrawing from addiction without methadone or other medical aids.

Paul Skett, a senor lecturer in pharmacology at Glasgow University, gave warning that the child could suffer long-term health problems. He said: “At 11, the brain is still forming and developing. There could also be consequences for the girl’s development into womanhood as this is the age when puberty normally starts.”

Scotland’s problem with drugs — vividly portrayed in Trainspotting, the novel by Irvine Welsh — is such that an estimated 20,000 children have parents who are hooked on drugs, about half of whom live in Glasgow. According to a survey in 2004, the city has at least 60 pre-teenage heroin addicts.

Ian Davidson, the Labour MP for Glasgow South West, said: “We need to identify whether this is a particular issue to this family or, more worryingly, if this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of this sort of drug use among classmates.”

At Pollok Shopping Centre, locals said that they had heard of drug addicts hanging around the car park and neighbouring areas. Frank Dorricott, 37, said: “You hear of drug problems in the area, but never with a child so young. It gives the place a horrible atmosphere to think that she might have got the drugs here.”

Margaret McCloumman, 66, said: “It is normally very quiet. The only time it gets busy is when the kids get out of school or come down during their lunchbreaks.

“They never normally cause any trouble though. It is frightening that such a young girl managed to get drugs. You have to wonder how her parents did not pick up on it because it must have been having an effect on her.”

A spokesman for the Pollok Shopping Centre said: “It is possible this is happening outside the centre, in an area which we are not responsible for and which is not covered by our CCTV.”

• Scotland’s reputation as “the sick man of Europe” was reinforced yesterday after a report labelled Scottish girls the heaviest teenage drinkers in the world.

  According to a poll of 160,000 youngsters conducted by the World Health Organisation, by the age of 15 more than a third of Scottish girls are drinking spirits once a week.

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