“A few months ago, a mother worried about her 15-year-old son called me. She told me that the boy was taking hallucinogens and she justified this choice by having read numerous articles in which it was written that hallucinogens increase brain plasticity and are used in ‘microdosing’ mode”, small quantities, “even by important people in the US. He had read these things on the Internet and then he had taken action. As happens with cannabis, the message that gets around is: since these substances can be therapeutic, they do good and not harm, and a sort of campaign is built at the end of which the product goes on the market and, whether it’s legal or illegal, who cares”. These are some of the paths that lead towards the ‘mass market’ of drugs.
After Covid “everything has changed”, he tells time.news Salute Riccardo Gatti, director of the Addiction Area Department of Asst Santi Paolo e Carlo in Milan, for years working on the subject of substances and the dynamics that lead to consumption. To explain one of these dynamics it starts from the story reported by the mother of a teenager. The pandemic has once again affected scenarios and mechanisms. “Even the drug market has changed a lot: the ‘delivery’ of substances is better organized than in the past – he points out – When there was the lockdown, sellers could no longer “peddle” in meeting places, so they organized themselves, they perfecting something that already existed, a service that was once for a certain type of customer, a socially integrated person willing to pay more, who serves himself in private and not in a drug dealing square. perfected and is now more extensive”.
And then it is “easier to buy products on the net”, underlines Gatti. “It’s true”, he admits, that on the web “there is a control job and there’s the risk of getting caught. But it’s also true that in such a large sea, a hundred fish pass by”, for one who takes. “At the same time – he adds – we note that Europe is becoming an increasingly important destination for substances, it is invaded by drugs and more will arrive”.
“With us – notes the expert – the consumption of crack is also spreading. A substance derived from cocaine that has a devastating effect. If you don’t physically collapse beforehand, destiny is a dangerous state of madness. A nightmare from which it is difficult come out intact”. There were some dynamics even before Covid, reflects Gatti: “After the pandemic, the impact of social insecurity for many people must also be considered. These are no longer the carefree years of the ‘boomers’. There is a kind of disconnect that it favors situations of self-care. Some phenomena such as ‘chem sex’ are a sign of this great insecurity: even to do normally pleasant things one feels the need for additives. Getting upset in this difficult period seems to some to be an answer, and it is dangerous. Yes they open up holes for the benefit of markets that are becoming more and more aggressive”.
If “some consumption and fashions are decreasing, currently everything that can become a psychoactive substance – whether legal or illegal – is potentially the object of sale and consumption, whether legal or illegal. People seem inclined to make these consumptions because they are offered , not because they have special needs – continues Gatti – There are those who do it for self-care, as mentioned, and there is always the marginalized and the deviant, but the bulk of consumption is from people who think they are making conscious use of something they like and they get it. What is not distributed on the illegal market, kids can also find it at home or next door”.
“Adapting to the markets in a sort of conformity” is something that, observes the doctor, “we pay dearly for”. The numbers speak. Today “there are many people who go to the Sert”, drug addiction services. “In Milan we will have a turnover of more or less around 10,000 a year. These are numbers that don’t make us understand, however, what is behind it. Because when people come to our services they already have big problems. Bro the new arrivals of 2022, the preponderant numbers are between 18 and 44 years old but then there are also over 65s and others in the range between 55 and 64. We also see quite young ages: the 18-24 group is well represented and is slightly higher to 25-34 year olds but I would say that the ages are the most varied, we have from kids to the elderly”. And there are those who observe that the age at which addiction begins has fallen.
Gatti points out that “once the drug market sold to certain segments of the population, but the bulk revolved around neighborhoods at risk, slightly problematic families, slightly deviant people. Now the heart of the problem is no longer there: there like to represent drug groves, we surround schools with cameras, but in reality the safe place is no longer there”. Today “you can buy it from the drug dealer, from a friend who puts himself on the market. Or on the net, where with a minimum of preparation you can find anything, and you don’t know, however, if that thing really arrives at you or is it something else, a counterfeit. Then there is a round of fake recipes to obtain drugs that can cause alterations. In short, everything changes. And today it is sold and bought no longer with the meanings of 20-30 years ago”.
For Gatti, counteracting these phenomena implies the need for “task forces of experts, forecasting models. We need more long-term communication strategy work and interaction with people, which we are not doing. If in the US an animal tranquilizer called xylazine (resistant to standard opioid overdose reversal treatments, among others) is being used to cut illicit fentanyl, with devastating impact, and is being detected in a growing proportion of drug samples “intercepted,” there is a risk that it will happen here too in a globalized world, and it is necessary to foresee and intervene”.