The aim of this study is to examine the differences between children and young addicts depending on the presence of parental addiction in the psychosocial characteristics (sex, age, degree of education, material status), in the length of the first time consuming of the main addictive substance to the parent's knowledge, at the age of the first consumption of any and the main addictive substance, given the type of referral to addiction treatment facilities, the beginning of experimentation and the dominant etiologic factor for addiction development. The survey was conducted by analyzing the data collected through Pompidou questionnaire on the territory of the Republic of Croatia in the period from 2011 to 2015. Respondents in the study are young people up to the age of 21 who have been indicted for abuse of addiction substance into a national addiction register and divided into two groups. In a parental addiction group one or both parents are alcohol and/or drug addicted and there is no registered addiction in the second group. The total number of participants is 409, in the group of participants with parents there are 194 participants, while in the group without parental addiction 215 participants. Data analysis provided that in a group with parental addiction are more female participants and on average they have a lower educational level and a lower physical status than a group of participants whose parents are not addicts. In both groups, parents found out about consumption on average after the first year of using addictive drugs, the participants with addicted parents had begun to consume addictive drugs earlier. In the case of non-parent dependent respondents, the most commonly referred by the Center for Social Welfare and by the Courts and the Police. In both groups, the main reasons for experimentation are reduced to the influence of peers, fun and curiosity, and the most common estimate of the etiological factor in the parental addiction group is the pathology of the family, and in group without parental dependence is the influence of the peers.