Bahrain has seen an increase in children becoming hooked on drugs, with some addicts coming in for treatment as young as 14-years-old, experts in the kingdom said.
Experts at Bahrain’s Addicts Friends Society (AFS) said the average age of addicts it treated were aged over 30-years-old but in the last six years it has seen a rise in young people becoming hooked on narcotics.
“It’s mostly affecting teenagers and younger people,” AFS vice-president Ahmed Fadhul was quoted as saying by the Gulf Daily News. “”The older ones unfortunately either die of an overdose or some of them are in jail.”
Fadhul said some addicts were as young as 14-years-old. “”Mostly it’s because of peer pressure, because of curiosity… If we are talking about a growing number, what we are viewing in my field of work is mostly teenagers and young adults, not the older people.”
Around 95 percent of those treated by the AFS were local Bahrainis, the report said. The island state has also seen a rise in drug-related arrests, up 17 percent year-on-year in 2012 to 932.
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