According to the somewhat disquieting statistics revealed by the National Treatment Agency (NTA), the last three years have seen a whopping 50 percent increase in the number of children seeking help for treating cocaine addiction in England – with even kids as young as ten years undergoing de-addiction treatment.

Going by the NTA figures, over 746 children below 18 years were helped to kick their dependency on the Class A drug in England in 2009, as against the 2005-06 number of 453 under-18 children nursed through the dependency on the drug.

The under-18 group comprised a small group of very young children too – fourteen 12-14 years old children and as many as 169 children in the 14-16 years’ age-group required help to get off their cocaine addiction.

The perturbing NTA figures showed that, on the whole, nearly 25,000 below-18-year-olds needed addiction treatment for drugs and alcohol misuse last year. While half of these cases pertained to cannabis, more than one-third pertained to alcohol; with a comparatively lesser number of teenagers having sought treatment for crack and heroin.

While Rosanna O'Connor, NTA’s director of delivery, noted that the heroin “epidemic” had peaked; Lib Dem, a Norman Lamb health spokesman said: “We need to get the message across about the dangers of experimenting with a massively addictive drug like cocaine. Ministers must do a lot more to make people aware of the serious damage drug use can do to long-term health.”