Children in peril: The shocking reality of children and drugs in Britain today

DANIEL was in a morning maths lesson when his drooping head finally struck the desk.
As his teacher shook him from his stupor, the 12-year-old's glazed eyes and vacant look gave the game away – he was stoned.
This shocking scenario is repeated at schools across Britain as pupils can now get hold of super-strength skunk cannabis more easily than they can buy alcohol.
Latest Department of Health figures show 58% of children who seek specialist treatment do so as a result of cannabis use.
But those statistics are based on voluntary surveys – and thousands more young cannabis users go undetected.
For Daniel the first cannabis spliff of the day was always on the school field before registration or during morning break – and it left him in no state for learning.
"I was smoking cannabis every day – before school, during school and after school," he says. "It would be four or five joints a day. I was smoking at home so I wouldn't even do my homework.
"Friends were getting it for me, some even younger than me. I would go up to the school field and roll a spliff. I had my gear in my pocket most of the time. The teachers had no idea what we were up to.
"I was feeling constantly tired and couldn't be bothered to do anything. I was sleeping a lot more than I should have been. I found it hard to get up in the morning and to sit through a whole lesson felt impossible.
"A few times I walked into school and my eyes were red and glaring. I felt OK, I never thought it was a problem. But it was."
Last year Daniel was excluded from his state secondary in south London because of his drug use and poor attendance.
Now, aged only 14, he has been given a final chance to get an education.
"I'm done with cannabis now," he tells me. "It was costing me 40 a week."
It's not something you expect to hear from a boy with a Ben 10 pencil case.
Of the 7,000 pupils who took part in the latest nationwide drug-use survey, only 18% admitted taking drugs.
But users seem to be getting younger. Last year two eight-year-olds were caught showing bags of cannabis to their pals at a school in Blackpool.
Four nine-year-olds were suspended from a school in Burnley, Lancs, for possessing the same drug the year before.
A school in Cumbria recently excluded 17 pupils following an investigation into the sale on its premises of anti-depressants containing diazepam.
Sara, from Chelmsford, Essex, was thrown out of her family home when her boozing spiralled into a daily cocktail of hard drugs. Egged on by a friend, she smuggled alcohol into school by pouring spirits into soft drink bottles when she was just 13.
"I started doing cocaine and weed while I was still excessively drinking," Sara recalls. "I'm talking six bottles of wine and vodka from when I got up until I passed out somewhere.
"It got to the point where I was being sick during lessons. I couldn't stand up, I couldn't see straight and I was slurring. I got kicked out of school because I used to turn up drunk and do coke before I went in.