Some 960,000 young people aged15-to-19 have tried narcotics at least once in their life,almost 40% of the students in this age range, and over 680,000have taken drugs over the last year, Cabinet Secretary AlfredoMantovano told a conference for the presentation of the annualreport to parliament on drug addiction. Mantovano said the data referred to 2023. "We have a lowering of the age of the youth population's firstapproach to drugs," he said.
He added that the shocking recent case of a 16-year-old who wasbrutally murdered by two teenagers in Pescara due to adisagreement over petty drug pushing was the sort of crime thatis "systematically repeated". He referred to "years, if not decades, of road accidents with anunexplainable cause and murders that have been brought about bythe total absence of inhibiting brakes and have only one commonthread - drug use". Riproduzione riservata © Copyright ANSA.