The woman who became Britain’s youngest mother at just twelve has been caught growing cannabis in the home where she lives with her two young sons.
Amy Crowhurst, now 19, told Crawley Magistrates’ Court that she smoked the drug in order to escape the stress of parenthood.
She said she began growing dope because she could not afford to buy alcohol.
Police raiding her home discovered 5.2g of the class B drug, along with equipment for growing it.
She pleaded guilty to a total of three counts of possessing the drug.
Miss Crowhurst was sentenced to a community order for nine months, told to pay £40 costs and enrolled on a drug rehabilitation course.
The teenager first became pregnant when she was twelve years old after a one night stand with a 15-year-old at a local youth club.
Her second pregnancy came three years later.
After becoming pregnant with her first son, Alfie, she said: “I know I was stupid to get pregnant but I’m not that bothered really.
“Of course I wish it had never happened but it’s too late now.
“All I’d say to other girls like me is take more care than I did.
“I’m OK now but I don’t know how I’ll feel when my friends are older and going out at night and I have to stay in and look after Alfie.”
The UK’s under-18 pregnancy rate remains the highest in Western Europe.
The Government is planning to introduce more explicit sex education to the compulsory school curriculum as part of its bid to tackle the problem.
But one recent scheme where vulnerable youngsters were targeted with sexual health information and given contraception actually saw conceptions more than double.
Commenting on the outcome, national columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said: “British children know enough already about sex; it shouts at them from billboards, whispers to them in magazines and newspapers, entices them on the internet and on TV, and consumes them in modern books for children, too.
“The problem is that this sexual awareness is received and ingested but with no guidance on consequences, nor any cautionary social mores.
“And although teenage pregnancies most affect those on low incomes, the valueless universe is affecting all our children.”
The Daily Telegraph’s Ed West wrote in August that the sexual revolution and advent of the contraceptive pill was “a middle-class affair” which has been disastrous for the poor.
He says “the baby boomer generation were the wealthiest in history and believed sexual prudery was no longer necessary, and my generation were brought up thinking it was an outdated superstition.
“We’re now realising that there were some very good reasons for it.”