A seven-year-old child has been caught smoking cannabis, a headteacher has told council chiefs.
Jane Wareham, head of Ysgol y Castell, in Kidwelly, west Wales, told Carmarthenshire county councillors that she had heard of a case of one child as young as six taking the drug.
The headteacher, who was not referring to her own school, was speaking last Thursday to a social justice scrutiny committee in Llanelli, discussing the council’s policy on substance abuse.
A member of the committee herself, she told councillors that the problem was not helped by those parents who used drugs.
“I am aware of one child of seven using cannabis. There are others I have heard of as young as six,” she later told the South Wales Evening Post in Swansea.
County councillor John Jenkins, who also attended the meeting, applauded Ms Wareham for raising the case. He said: “We did not think that the problem had permeated this far down into our schools.”
Bryan Stephens, the council’s head of school support, said the local education authority gave schools policy guidance on substance misuse.
