Girl of 11 collapsed at school after taking heroin

An 11-year-old girl who collapsed at her primary school was being treated for the effects of heroin yesterday.

The girl, from Glasgow, was the youngest person confirmed to have suffered from the effects of the drug, other than babies who suffer withdrawal symptoms from a mother's addiction.

The girl, who has not been named, told doctors she had been smoking the drug for more than two months.

Social services and police have launched an investigation as reports said that the child admitted buying £10 bags of the class-A drug from a female dealer based at a shopping centre.

The authorities were alerted when the girl appeared to fall asleep in the classroom last week and could not be roused.

A source close to the case told the Sunday Mail: "Initially the teachers thought that she had unwittingly taken drugs somehow. It turned out to be far from the truth - she has been using the drug regularly for weeks. It seems this girl is a product of her own environment - she didn't believe that she was doing anything that was out of the ordinary."

Alistair Ramsay, director of Scotland Against Drugs, said: "There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting that there are children of this age taking heroin, but this is the first incident that has been officially confirmed."