Abuso di alcol tra gli adolescenti e il fenomeno del binge drinking

This dissertation topic is the abuse of alcohol during adolescence and early adulthood and the phenomenon of binge drinking, with a focus on the situation in Italy. It will also analyse the difference between European countries on the matter of binge drinking and the regulations put in places by various country in order to fight this phenomenon. While article and essays on the subject are extremely common, few of them show any sign of scientific rigour and accuracy, often relaying more on exaggerated data, put forward for shock value only, rather than actual facts. My goal with this paper is to produce an unbiased review of the official data and to identify social and legislative measure to reduce the problem. In order to present the a grounded and accurate analysis on this issue, the data that will be proposed to the reader will be those published by the World Health Organization in 2014 and 2011 and by Istat in 2007 and 2016. In order to identify the risk factors correlated with youth drinking and to select which countermeasures are effective when it comes to reduce the problem, I used works such as those of D. Chisholm and D.C. Fuhr ¿Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of policies and programmes to reduce the harm caused by alcohol¿ (2009) and M. Hallgren ¿Studies in youth alcohol consumption and prevention¿ (2012). The first chapter is a short glossary, where the specific terminology that will be used in the following chapters of my work is explained and given a definition, based on the one present in the 2016 Istat report, in order to avoid confusion and conflicting interpretations of the data based on different definitions. The second chapter's topic is the drinking problem in Italy, in the beginning I'll talk about the general population and then I'll focus specifically on the data regarding adolescents and young adults. The third chapter will focus on the problem of ¿binge drinking¿ and the reality of its growth in Italy. Comparisons with other European countries situations will be made using the data provided by the World Health Organization in their 2010 country-by-country analysis and the Eurocare report of 2010. In the fourth chapter, possible countermeasures to the issue, derived from those adopted elsewhere in the world, will be analysed and valued for their potential pros and cons, and their perceived effectiveness in the countries that already adopt them. My paper's final conclusions will report that, while the age of when people first drink is pretty much stable in Italy and the sheer amount of alcohol consumed is reducing year after year, there are signs of a shift from ¿soft¿ beverages, such as wine and beer, towards ¿heavy drinks, such as spirits and distillate, among the youngest drinkers. The phenomenon of binge drinking seems to be on his way to replace traditional drinking system for adolescents, especially in the north of Italy, there seem to be some crucial differences between the binge drinking in the country of northern Europe and the binge drinking in Italy. Of the many policies adopted abroad, the one which seems to generate the best results is the one adopted by the Scandinavian countries od Sweden and Norway, which consist on a heavy taxation on alcoholic beverages, which not only greatly reduce the access to alcohol of young people, whom usually have limited resources at their disposal, but also start a downward trend of consumption for the adult population, particularly on the lower income classes, historically the most vulnerable to alcoholism and substances abuse.

Nel presente lavoro varrà affrontato il tema dell'abuso di alcool tra adolescenti e giovani adulti, con un'analisi del fenomeno del ¿Binge drinking¿. Negli ultimi anni questo tema è diventato estremamente popolare tra i media, e viene ripresentato in modo ciclico ogni qualche mese, generalmente in concomitanza con eclatanti fatti di cronaca. In queste occasioni la situazione che viene presentata è drammatica, con giovani che bevono sempre di più, sempre più sovente e incominciando sempre più giovani. Purtroppo, queste descrizioni della realtà mancano spesso di dati che le supportino, oppure i dati che vengono forniti sono privi di fonti e non facilmente verificabili. È facile trovare molteplici statistiche differenti per gli stessi parametri tra i vari siti web relativi all'argomento. Per questa ragione nelle pagine che seguiranno mi impegnerò per fare il punto della situazione, utilizzando i dati ufficiali pubblicati dall' ISTAT nel suo report annuale e quelli dell'Organizzazione Mondiale per la Sanità pubblicati nel 2014, e poi aggiornati nel 2015. I punti che analizzerò sono i seguenti: - La definizione dei fenomeni di abuso di alcol e del ¿binge drinking¿ - Effettiva estensione del problema dell'abuso di alcool tra i giovani in Italia e il trend che questo fenomeno ha registrato nell'ultimo decennio; - I fattori che incrementano il rischio di abuso di alcool nella popolazione giovanile; - Il fenomeno del binge drinking negli altri paesi europei e come viene affrontato; - Identificazione di misure efficaci ¿ legislative, sociali ed economiche ¿ che possono essere utilizzate per combattere il fenomeno, tramite l'osservazione di modelli adottati in altri paesi. Il testo sarà strutturato in quattro capitoli più la conclusione.