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The vast majority of UK adults [84 per cent] think children should be protected from marketing by tobacco companies, according to new research by Cancer Research UK. Four out five people believe tobacco marketing is harmful to children, while more than two thirds agree that eye catching logs, colourful and distinctive branding on packets make [...]

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A schoolboy found dead after taking a lethal cocktail of heroin, alcohol and an anti-depressant probably obtained the drugs from his family, an inquest was told. Drew Quinlan, 13, was found by his grandfather face down on a sofa at his family’s £4 million house in Richmond as he tried to wake him to go to [...]

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A controversial non-profit group is giving thousands of drug-addicted women money to be sterilised. The group hangs stark adverts in clinics and homeless shelters in North Carolina, which read, ‘Don’t let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit,’ and ‘She has her daddy’s eyes… and her mommy’s heroin addiction.’ Project Prevention founder Barbara Harris, 59, said [...]

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Young people in Wales are to be targeted in a major new drive costing more than £850,000 to encourage them to stop smoking. Children as young as 11 will be the focus of the three-year campaign by the anti-smoking charity Ash Wales. The Young People’s Quit Smoking Service, which Ash says is the first in [...]

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A privately educated schoolboy was found dead on the sofa of his family’s £4million townhouse after taking a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, an inquest heard yesterday. Drew Quinlan, 13, was found face down on the settee of his grandfather’s  four-storey home in Richmond, South-West London. He had consumed a toxic mixture of anti-depressants belonging [...]

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Elementary school children are developing addictions to online pornography in a worrying trend that some scientists believe is on the cusp of becoming a national epidemic. Several studies have discovered links between viewing online pornography and problems including social isolation, performing badly in school and behavioral issues. Seven out of ten teenagers have viewed pornography [...]

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Authorities say Patricia Krentcil’s daughter, now six, turned up at her elementary school in Nutley, New Jersey, with sunburn, prompting a school nurse to contact police.   New Jersey is among several states that have adopted regulations prohibiting anyone age 14 or under from using ultraviolet devices because of the risk of skin cancer.   [...]

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Interviews with hundreds of thousands of youngsters across Europe and North America show those in England, Scotland and Wales to be among the heaviest drinkers. Almost half of 15-year-old girls in the three countries have been drunk at least twice, found researchers working on WHO’s Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study.   Across the 39 [...]

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A mother was found hanged in her flat yards away from the lifeless body of her six-year-old daughter after spiralling into a severe depression following heavy cannabis use. Clare White, 28, had been smoking the drug virtually every day despite suffering a ‘drug-induced psychotic episode’ aged 17 which left her temporarily unable to speak, an [...]

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Breaking up illicit playground trading in cigarettes is a key to cutting smoking among the young, a study says. Youngsters’ access to cigarettes is often through peer networks at school, suggests research drawing on the habits of 9,000 young smokers. The study from the Institute of Education, University of London, says efforts to stop smoking [...]

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Newly discovered networks of neurons suggest some youngsters are more likely to begin smoking, experimenting with cannabis or consuming large amounts of alcohol. Scientists used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans to highlight abnormalities by comparing the brains of almost two thousand 14 year olds. It is the first time the vast and chaotic actions of a [...]

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Two more glimpses of the surreal underworld of our “child protection” system. I spoke last week to a mother whose two young children were recently removed by social workers because she had once been involved with a violent partner. He was long out of her life, and she had been living happily with the father [...]

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Women who smoke during pregnancy could be more likely to have a child with high-functioning autism, say researchers. ‘It has long been known that autism is an umbrella term for a wide range of disorders that impair social and communication skills,’ said lead author Professor Amy Kalkbrenner from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. ‘What we are [...]

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There is a must-read article in this week’s New York Times Sunday magazine about over-zealous Alabama prosecutors bringing charges against drug-addicted mothers. It’s a troubling and complex issue. Obviously no one thinks that using drugs during pregnancy is a good idea, and it is a tragedy when a baby is stillborn, or born with drugs [...]

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Most Saturday nights I go out — often to a party. Everyone drinks, and there are drugs around. Though I’ve not tried drugs, I did recently end up in hospital after drinking too much at a school friend’s party, which isn’t like me at all. I went to another friend’s house to get ready, and [...]

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A boy of three was found with bags of cannabis stuffed in his pocket at nursery. Teachers were stunned when the drug-filled bag fell out of the youngster’s pocket as he played with toys. The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, then happily showed off two more of the bags. When asked about the drugs, [...]

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A County Antrim woman has told the BBC how drugs turned her happy child into a withdrawn and agitated teenager. She has claimed paramilitaries are behind drug dealing in east Antrim, and that drugs are readily available. She said it was a major issue in the area and not enough was being done to stop [...]

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A mother whose life descended into alcoholism was finally shamed into sobriety after seeing a photo of herself passed out clutching a vodka bottle – taken by her 15-year-old daughter. Samm Veevers, 45, was slowly drinking herself to death consuming a litre of vodka a day in addition to gallons of cheap cider and beer [...]

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Major internet firms were yesterday accused of being ‘complicit’ in exposing children to hardcore pornography and violence online by continuing to refuse to give parents the choice of blocking material that no child should see, but that is too easily available on every device now in the home. Their defiance comes despite an independent inquiry into [...]

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I learned to be a good mother because my own was a brutal drunk: One woman’s account of having an alcoholic parent By HELEN CARROLL   Close bond: Giselle Mannering with her daughter Frederique in 2007 The flames from the chip pan were already ceiling-high when Giselle Mannering stepped into her family’s smoke-filled kitchen. Despite [...]

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More than one in three of those born in professional households had downed a full glass before reaching their teenage years, the statistics show.   The 35 per cent figure among the middle classes is almost twice the level found among 12-year-olds across all economic groups. Experts said that most children who had drunk alcohol [...]

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A 35-year-old man has been arrested after his 5-year-old stepson brought 50 packets of heroin to school for show and tell. Santos Roman went to the Barnum School in Connecticut on Monday to retrieve the drugs and found police waiting for him. He was charged with risk of injury to a minor, possession of narcotics, [...]

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A school is offering counselling and advice on quitting smoking to pupils aged just 11. Honywood Community Science School in Coggeshall, Essex has introduced the classes aimed at helping the youngsters quit the habit. The children, who are in just their first year of secondary school, are also offered time with the school’s nurses and [...]

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Children as young as 10 are more familiar with some alcohol brands than popular foods and snacks, new research suggests. The report, by the charity Alcohol Concern, calls for a change in the law to restrict television advertising of alcohol and to ban alcohol sponsorship of events that particularly appeal to young people. via Alcohol [...]

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Ten boys at a village school were strip-searched by police over claims they were concealing drugs in their underwear. Without seeking parental consent, officers took the pupils to a private room before ordering them to remove their uniform and checking inside their underwear. Two boys – aged 15 and 16 – were arrested over the [...]

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It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon earlier this month, and the noise in my kitchen was reaching fever pitch. ‘Mummeeee,’ they wailed. Son thumped daughter; daughter responded with histrionics, escalating the conflict by seizing his favourite toy. Cue hysteria. As I shoved six shiny sausages into the oven for their tea, trying to ignore the [...]

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Only around three per cent of young people drank alcohol on more than five days in a week compared with 16 per cent of people aged 45 to 64. Even more people elderly people drank frequently with one in five admitting to drinking on five or more days in a week. Men drank more frequently [...]

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A mother has been accused of injecting her teenage daughters with heroin before sending them off to school. Shantel Parker also allegedly sold drugs to her children’s classmates. Police were alerted after a witness from the school said the girls, aged 14 and 16, appeared to be under the influence of drugs. Shantel Parker allegedly [...]

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The morning after the night before, Jane Smith winced in pain as the sun crept through her eyelids. Last night had clearly been heavy: an alcohol-fuelled hen night with friends, and as she attempted to recall it all, Jane consoled herself by thinking at least she wouldn’t be the only one with a sore head. [...]

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When I heard about Whitney Houston’s death, my thoughts turned to her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, 18, and the struggle she must be facing in dealing with the loss of her mother. I have seen children lose a parent to addiction. Accompanying the grief of bereavement are tormenting feelings of anger and a lack of self-worth. [...]

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Almost 160,000 children start smoking every year in the UK – enough to fill around 5,200 classrooms, a charity has warned. The 157,000 children aged 11 to 15 who take up the habit every year could also make up 14,000 junior football teams, according to Cancer Research UK. The charity, which supports a move to [...]

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Usually it is a parent begging a judge to have mercy on an errant teenager. But when Julie Cairns, 38, ended up in court after a drunken car chase with police, it was her  14-year-old daughter who pleaded for her to be spared jail. The judge said Cairns should be ‘thoroughly ashamed’ for putting her [...]

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A newborn died after he was left in the care of his homeless, alcoholic mother by social workers, a damning report has revealed. Social workers from Southend Council found the 34-day-old baby dead on a sofa next to his mother, who had ‘consumed a large amount of alcohol the night before his death’, the review [...]

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British Asian children who gamble are twice as likely to become addicted as white children, new research suggests. Nine thousand 11-15 year olds were surveyed by the University of Salford and National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). Of the ethnic groups studied, Asians were the least likely to gamble, but those who did had the [...]

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It is obvious that Michelle, like any young mother, is besotted with her baby as she smothers her in kisses. But getting to this point has not been easy. Michelle found out she was pregnant two days before she started a five-month prison sentence for assault causing actual bodily harm. She had been addicted to [...]

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The move is designed to cut one of the world’s highest rates of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which sees babies develop mental and physical defects in the womb due to a mother’s heavy drinking. It would penalise both off-licences and supermarkets, and bars and restaurants, for supplying alcohol to pregnant women, as well as anyone wearing [...]

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A number of children under 10 have been treated in hospitals in Northern Ireland for eating disorders. The Department of Health has not published the exact number, but up to 12 children were hospitalised in the three years between 2007 and 2010. Nearly 80 teenagers have received hospital treatment for conditions such as anorexia in [...]

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Viewers of One Born Every Minute were left outraged last night after a teenager revealed that she continued smoking during pregnancy. Focusing on single parents, the reality show followed 17-year-old Jessica as she went into labour at Leeds General Infirmary. With cameras rolling at her bedside, the mother-to-be told friends that it was only hospital [...]

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Drug users hooked on crack cocaine may have inherited their vulnerability to addictive behaviour, scientists claimed yesterday. Researchers found that drug addicts and their non-addicted siblings share certain features of the brain, meaning it may be hard-wired for addictive behaviour. Scientists who scanned the brains of 50 pairs of brothers and sisters of whom one [...]

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She strikes a pose for the camera, her bright eyes shining and a smile playing on her lips. A favourite picture from her family’s album shows Alisa Dmitrijeva a few weeks after she arrived in Britain to start a new life. The pretty Latvian teenager was excited about her future. She enrolled at a college [...]

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A new offence of drug-driving is to be created after David Cameron met the parents of a teenager killed by a speeding driver who had been smoking cannabis. The Prime Minister will announce the legislation amid evidence that motorists high on drugs are escaping punishment because of gaps in the law and a lack of [...]

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Step aside Justin Bieber, Twilight Saga and bubblegum-coloured lipstick. The latest round-up of teen crazes is far shadier – and makes for some rather less innocuous reading. Children as young as 13 are experimenting with drugs and alcohol in guises that belie their seriousness and make them easy contraband at school, say experts. Anderson Cooper [...]

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It may have been snack time at this Connecticut school, but there were a different kind of munchies in mind when a boy displayed nine bags of pot. Police in the town of Meriden were called to Hanover Elementary School yesterday after the four-year-old special needs student pulled nine baggies of marijuana from his jacket [...]

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Teenagers with a family history of alcoholism are more likely to develop similar addictions because of the way their brains are wired, say scientists. They found such adolescents exhibited more impulsive behaviour, a trait associated with alcohol abuse. It is now hoped the findings will help develop more effective prevention strategies and treatment for different [...]

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A teenager’s pancreas was ‘falling apart’ after she drank six litres of strong cider a day from the age of 14. Two major operations saved the life of the young girl after years of cheap alcohol consumption led to her developing severe acute pancreatitiis, her doctor revealed. She ‘only just’ recovered from the serious alcohol [...]

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One of Britain’s best-known politicians today describes how being raised in a London pub by an alcoholic mother and hard-working grandparents made her into the high-flyer she is today. Shadow cabinet minister Caroline Flint said she was toughened up by having to leave home at 17 in the middle of her A-levels, when mother Wendy’s [...]

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A young man who started drinking aged 10 is desperately waiting for a life-saving liver transplant. By the age of sixteen he was regularly drinking eight cans of lager at parties. Now, aged 26, student Matt Maden is living on borrowed time and is constantly by the phone waiting for new of a donor organ. [...]

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Children as young as 11 have been arrested for possessing drugs with intent to sell, shocking figures revealed yesterday. The statistics show the extent to which drugs have penetrated the lives of schoolchildren. Police have made more than 12,000 arrests of under-16s for possessing or supplying illegal substances over the past three years. The figures [...]

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A mother-to-be has told how becoming pregnant has helped to save her life after years of suffering from a debilitating eating disorder. Catherine Thomson, 27, battled with anorexia for seven years before she fell pregnant with her first child. The childcare worker, who lives in Derby with husband Jamie, 28, first noticed that she was [...]

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The father of an 18-year-old who died taking heroin today called on schools to act against a “terrifying” drug epidemic among children. James McConnel, 53, whose son Freddy was found dead in his Battersea flat surrounded by syringes following five years of drug problems, fears drug abuse is “absolutely rife” in schools. Mr McConnel says [...]

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