Primary school children in England are to be taught about the dangers of "crack" cocaine as part of a new anti-drugs strategy.

A Home Office report warns that dealing in crack and the gun culture associated with it are seen as an "attractive career option" by some young people.

So the government wants all schools to offer drugs education by March 2004 - with 14% of primary schools and 4% of secondaries presently not doing so.

A Home Office spokesman said head teachers would be allowed to shape their own policies, but the potential effects of crack were seen as an important element.

It is important to get children to understand what is around Elmley Junior School Headteacher, Sue Ansty

"It will be down to schools exactly how they deliver but clearly crack is a dangerous drug and we want to look at that and see how we can educate children in the most effective way to the dangers," he said.

Headteacher of Elmley Junior School in Bristol, Sue Ansty, told BBC News children needed to know about drugs from the ages of nine or 10.

"It is bad - but it is important to get children to understand what is around."

Inner city problems

Parents are also said to need greater awareness.

The report, Tackling Crack, calls for urgent action to tackle what has become a "drug of choice" for many.

It is said to have caused major problems in deprived areas and particularly in Afro-Caribbean communities.

The spread of crack cocaine in Britain's inner cities threatens to become one of the biggest social and law and order problems of the next few years, officials believe.

The British Crime Survey earlier this year revealed that as many as 45,000 people aged between 16 and 24 were users of crack - a sharp increase on the same survey four years earlier.