The drug problem hiding in Suffolk's classrooms and bedrooms

Ruth Lee has worked with young people for 25 years. She has seen trends come and go, substances rise and fall, and attitudes shift with the times. But the landscape, she says, has changed.

"Do you know what is really sad?" she says. "Those numbers are tiny in comparison to where they used to be. Probably 10 years ago, we had about 250 young people a year in service. We know these figures are probably the tip of an iceberg."

Ruth is team manager at Turning Point's Foundations service, one of the main providers of drug and alcohol support for under-21s in Suffolk, working alongside Suffolk Family Carers and Iceni. In her experience, the issue is not that it goes unseen. It is that too many have simply come to accept it as normal.

The numbers behind the silence

The data, drawn from a BBC investigation into children in drug treatment nationally, shows that 90 people under the age of 18 in Suffolk were in treatment for drug use – a 13% rise in under-18s accessing support across the UK in 2024-25. Of those in treatment, 39% were under 15, and 11% were under 10.

Suffolk County Council said the local increase was down to improved referral pathways and a focused effort on working across organisations. That is, in part, a good news story, but Lee believes the bigger picture is far more troubling.

"There are lots of young people who are suffering through poor mental wellbeing, who are feeling isolated and lonely, who are trying to find a way to fit in and are using drugs and alcohol," she says. "But we are seeing people towards the end when it is a bit more chaotic."

'It's only weed'

Cannabis accounts for the largest share of treatment cases by some distance. Seventy of the 90 young people in treatment last year reported problems with it, with alcohol second at 35. For Lee, this reflects something she encounters daily: a widespread normalisation of a substance that many still dismiss as harmless.

"There is this language at the moment of 'it is only weed, only cannabis,'" she says. "But people are not taking into account that the strains around at the moment are much stronger. The level of THC is much, much higher, so the level of paranoia and mental health concerns attached can be much greater."

Human brains do not finish developing until the age of 25, meaning children who begin using cannabis at 11 or 12 are causing damage at a critical stage. "Young people's brains do not know what normal is," Lee says. "We see some young people who, if they do not have weed, feel really angry, and that can result in violence in the home. Young people are saying they need it to sleep, but the research says cannabis affects the quality of your sleep."

There is a darker dimension, too. Cannabis, she explains, is frequently used as a tool by those looking to exploit vulnerable young people. "It is one of those drugs that can be used to lure people in as part of the grooming process when we are talking about gangs, groups and county lines," she says. "Here is a bag of weed. I am your friend. It is a way of building a connection with somebody, which can then be used in a negative way."

The ketamine emergency

If cannabis represents a slow, normalised problem, ketamine is arriving faster and with consequences that are, in Lee's words, genuinely shocking.

Ten young people in Suffolk's treatment figures last year reported ketamine as their primary substance. That may sound modest, but Lee says it marks a fundamental shift.

"This is the first time in my 25 years of working with young people that we have seen ketamine used as much as we are now," she says. "We are seeing young people who are using it daily, in large quantities, and we are seeing the health implications."

Those implications are severe. The drug causes progressive bladder damage, and Lee describes young people in their early 20s who are incontinent, in constant pain and unable to look after themselves. "Their bladders are inflamed and have shrunk, so urination is really painful. And they are stuck in a cycle. They believe that by using more ketamine, they can get rid of the pain, but the pain is caused by the ketamine."

Turning Point is now building direct links with urology departments, incontinence services, and GPs across Suffolk to reach young people before their condition becomes critical. "How do you leave the house when you are wetting yourself the whole time and cannot stand up straight because you are in pain?" Lee asks. "Being able to go and see clients in their homes is really, really important."

Excluded, not supported

Last year, 235 pupils were suspended and six were permanently excluded from Suffolk schools in connection with drugs or alcohol. Lee says Turning Point works closely with schools across the county, offering free education sessions and tailored interventions, and she understands the difficult position schools find themselves in. But she is aware that zero-tolerance approaches can stop young people from coming forward.

"Young people might not want to say they need help due to that fear of being permanently excluded," she says.

The service also works across Suffolk through the Crucial Crew programme, which delivers sessions for pupils in the year before secondary school covering drugs, alcohol and personal safety. In some cases, Turning Point has gone directly into schools where a specific problem has emerged.

"We have been asked to go into schools where they have had a problem with young people using aerosols, which is incredibly dangerous. There is a risk of death every time," she says. "The young people were not ready to come and see us one-to-one, but we needed to make sure they understood the risks."

'We are the scaffolding'

For young people who do find their way to Turning Point, whether through their own initiative, schools, mental health services or criminal justice partners, Lee describes a service built around one central idea: connection.

"We talk a lot about the opposite of addiction being connection," she says. "What we want to do is connect young people back to real community, real life."

The Foundations service meets young people wherever they are, rather than expecting them to travel to a central hub, something that matters enormously in a rural county. Around 40% of referrals are self-referrals, often coming late at night from young people who have reached a point of crisis and looked for help online.

"I like to think of us as scaffolding," Lee says. "We come around and scaffold while you rebuild your foundations, so that when we leave, you are stronger than when we first turned up."

She is clear-eyed about the scale of what remains to be done. Reaching the young people who are not yet in the figures, she says, requires not just services but a cultural shift that starts at home.

"We need families to normalise the conversations around asking for help," she says. "If your mum and dad say, 'I was having a bad day, so I went and talked to someone', when young people are in crisis, they know it is okay to ask for help."

The bottom line

Ninety young people are in treatment. Two hundred and thirty-five school suspensions. A decade ago, 250 young people a year were reaching services like Turning Point alone. The problem has not shrunk. It has gone quiet. Whether that silence reflects better coping, better prevention, or simply better hiding is a question Suffolk's communities, schools and commissioners urgently need to answer. The young people already know.

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