Cause for concern: Drug,substance abuse catching them younger in city

At PGI’s Drug De Addiction Centre,which sees around 500 cases from the region annually,around 5 per cent of the patients are below 18 years of age. “Tobacco is a common addiction among children of all age groups whom we counsel at our clinic,” says Dr D Basu of the psychiatry department,PGI.

“We had an eight-year-old patient last year who was addicted to sniffing white fluid. Other substances that trap children include transparent eraser fluid and medicines such as proxyvon and spasmo-proxyvon,prescribed for stomach cramps. The dependence on cough syrups have,however,seen a decline,” adds Dr Basu. He says all these products adversely affect the brain of children and there is a possibility of sudden collapse in rare cases.

“While counselling a child from a slum,we realised that peer pressure was the most dominant factor that had made him an addict. He told us that he was not allowed to be a part of his group of friends till he started smoking,” adds a PGI doctor.

1978 to 2003
PGI’s 25 yrs with adolescent addicts
* Of the 85 cases studied during the period,63.5% patients had come from nuclear families,83.5% were from an urban background and 54.1% were school dropouts
* 14.8 years was found to be the mean age when children used a primary substance for the first time. The mean age vis-à-vis first presentation was 17 years
* The commonest used primary substance was opioids (76.2%) and the commonest used opioid was heroin (36.5%)
* More than half the subjects (54.2%) were nicotine dependent at the time of presentation
* Curiosity was the most common reason (78.8%) for taking to drugs
* The results suggest that the development of substance dependence in children and adolescents is a combination of familial and social vulnerability factors,including the drug culture of the social milieu