Drug workers, angry parents and even addicts themselves have called for a 'sick' novelty pen to be banned.

Fears were raised that the syringe-styled ballpoint - on sale at a major high street chain - could encourage youngsters to pick up dirty needles which users often drop in Bradford's street.

And experts warned that the pens could easily destroy the traditional taboo associated with syringes and introduce them as an accepted part of youth culture.

Sonia Carter, 45, of Clayton, told how she came across the novelty while on a family holiday last week.

"I looked down and saw my niece's two-year-old boy with it in his hand," she said.

"I was gobsmacked. It absolutely terrified me. It's made to look like it has blood in it and I thought he had picked up a dirty needle."

The pen had been bought 'as a joke' by her niece from The Gadget Shop at the Meadowhall Shopping Centre, Sheffield.

She said: "These things are sick and disgusting and they should be banned.

"If a child was used to handling these and saw a real needle in the street, they would be tempted to pick it up and play with it."

And Mrs Carter is well aware of the misery injecting drugs brings as her son Robert, pictured with a real syringe, left, and the novelty pen, has taken heroin since his early teens.

Robert, 23, who admits to still using the drug, said: "I cannot believe people can make something like this.

"People do leave used needles in ginnels and parks and this gives children the message that it is okay to pick them up and play with them.

"These thing are so realistic. Without picking them up you cannot tell the difference."

His mother added: "Heroin has destroyed my son and my family and yet they think this is a fun item. It makes me shake just picking it up - they should be taken off the shelves now."

Yvonne Oliver, director of the Buttershaw-based drugs project Ripple, said: "It is very sad that a piece of paraphernalia which has previously been taboo to children is now being turned into a novelty item."

"This is adapting something which is a potentially lethal product into popular youth culture."

She said that about half of heroin addicts did not inject through a fear of needles and the possible repercussions.

"With young children handling these things it could overcome this fear and break the taboo."

But a spokesman for The Gadget Shop insisted the pens were no worse than traditional children's 'doctors and nurses' toys.

She said: "They are very obviously a pen. They do not encourage children to take drugs."

"These are not empty syringes. A degree of common sense needs to be applied here."

She said the pens were often bought as gifts for people in the medical profession.

"They are no different from children playing with doctors and nurses kits when they are young."