Why am I so shocked . drugs yr7

[wakeupandsmellthecoffee]

Justbamazed really . friends husband told me he has had to caution 2 yr7 students for drug related incidents. this is not in an inner London school it's leafy Surrey. My child doesn't attend this school . just seems so sad that at the tender age of 11 / 12 they have been introduced to to drugs and selling it.

It was more of the year 7thing that made me shocked and apart from selling the fags I thing selling the other stuff is Arther Daley ish and very entrepreneurial.

Lol at the entrepreneurs selling on doughnuts and lucozades for a hefty profit - good for them!!

In the inner city school my husband used to teach in, they had a group of year 4s caught in posession and at the secondary I worked at, we were warned of the drug users by the primary schools when they came up to us.

Very common in my area sadly to find children trying drugs from 7/8 - usually those with older, teenage brothers who think it's funny to let their kid brother smoke a joint and put it on youtube. I would be very wary of letting my children [when they're older] spend time with friends who have teen brothers - unfair generalisation I know, but it was the common denominator in, I would say, 75% of cases.

My ds started sellin tomato ketchup sachets for half the price the canteen were selling hem for .lol

Selling

I have no problem with off site entrepreneurs

Just goes to show, with the Healthy Eating drive - you make something illegal it becomes sought after.

I do see both sides though - if household budgets are tight, you might assume Little Johnny is buying his one main meal of the day, in fact he's getting 2 doughnuts and a ciggie. But if Little Johnny was that way inclined, he could divert via newsagent and get a packet of haribos and a can of coke instead.

my son is doing catering as one of his options. Whenever they make something nice like cookies or cakes he sells them at break time.

I dont see anything wrong with a child looking for a legal way to make a bit of cash.

I must be very lucky as the crowd my sons mix with see drugs, smoking and even booze as very uncool. I hope he always sees it this way .

Mind you my friends son has been dealing all sorts since Y8 - this week is hooky Raybans, bought bulk from eBay, turning them over for £40 a pair, he paid the equiv of £5 a pair on a bulk order. That's netted him 2 grand so far and we've only been back a week at school!

I agree with most of the posters i was talking to a guy a while back who works at a international school diplomates kids ect and he siad the reason he was leaving because the inabilty to deal with the drug issue they have some sort of immunty and calls get made and it all gose away hes found coke on serval students

And when my son was at primary school a leaft suburb a boy in year 5 brought in a pellet gun

Funny though - here we are applauding enterprise in children - if it were their parents turning over hooky goods and making a profit we'd all be screaming 'shop the cheat! black market!'

Worra, sorry to be nit picky but where did you get that from that Surrey has high crime rates? I read that Surrey has the 8th lowest crime rates in the country, so much lower than average.

I have lived in small towns, leafy suburbs and inner city London - it was the small quiet places that had the high drug use.

So are there more drugs in inner city schools or leafy suburban or rural schools? Or is it just a universal problem? My DH wants to move out of London for exactly this kind of reason (drugs, gangs etc) but I'm not convinced anywhere else is safer. For one thing, I think teenagers who are bored and feel they're out in the sticks are very likely to try and be more 'cool'/ 'urban' by using drugs. At my inner city school none of my peer group took drugs apart from the odd joint, although we were very aware of the fact they were being dealt and used all around us. We didn't think drink was that glamorous either having grown up with congregations of drunks & homeless people all over the place. I don't have much out of the city experience to compare that to though. Year 7 does seem young and shocking to me

The average age for kids to start smoking dope is 12/13. I was shocked when I researched this

I think there are more drugs in inner cities but more users in small areas because there is nothing to do and the kids are more bored.

I used to live on a small island and dear Lord there were more drugs there that I ever encountered in 20 years of living in London!

I left school four years ago. People were regularly coming into school on a drug come down, smoking weed in the smokers bit and some even had pills in school. Why I don't know.

agree with proudandscary I think a lot of you are quite naive, drugs are everywhere and not just in the inner city.

Meant to say more young users in my last post.