Milan cracks down on underage drinking

Italian teenagers are not usually associated with a binge-drinking culture, unlike their northern European peers. But the city of Milan has decided otherwise.

From Monday, the authorities will introduce tough new laws banning the consumption of alcohol by under-16s. The measures include fines of €500 (£430, $700) for those caught drinking and for their parents and the retailers who sell the alcohol to them.

Although a nationwide ban on the sale of alcohol to under-16s is already on Italy's statute books it is rarely enforced, according to critics. Indeed, the custom is that Italian parents often introduce their children to alcohol at a very young age, a practice which has sometimes been highlighted as one reason why Italians drink less, or at least drink more responsibly and less aggressively, than northern Europeans.

But Italian newspapers carried photographs on Sunday of drunken youngsters in town centres to suggest that there is a growing binge-drinking problem adding to other social ills such as football hooliganism and anti-social behaviour.

Letizia Moratti, the mayor of Milan, said the new measure – approved by the city council late on Friday – constituted "a fully rounded ordinance" that would be more difficult for teenagers to flout than the current regulations. She also claimed that 34 per cent of Milanese 11-year-olds had "alcohol-related problems", without elaborating what they were.

"This is not to punish," she told La Repubblica on Sunday. "The objective is to send a message to youngsters and their families."

Critics of the measures said they reflected a growing social conservatism in Italy under Silvio Berlusconi, the centre-right prime minister and billionaire media tycoon who said on Sunday that Milan might be a model for the rest of Italy. Already some Italian towns have introduced night-time vigilante patrols to counter what they claim is a surge in crime.

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