Portuguese 16-year-olds have admitted that when it comes to getting hold of alcohol, the law is no barrier and they consider it ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’ to get hold of supplies.
This age group are ahead of their European counterparts in trying their first cigarette which, in the case of Portuguese kids is at 13 but their use of drugs is falling.
The findings are from the ‘European School Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs’ study presented by the Intervention Service into Additive Behavior.
In fact, the ‘access to alcohol’ question saw decreases in the 35 countries studied but an average of 78% across the board was just pipped by Portugal’s underage drinkers at 79%.
On the plus side, the young Portuguese surveyed in 2015 had a lower than average score for getting totally plastered in the past year and a significantly lower score for binge drinking in the past 30 days.
Top boozers in the survey were from Denmark, Austria and Hungary and the most abstemious were in Iceland and Albania.
As for binge drinking, Portugal’s inebriates scored 20% against a survey average of 35%.
Overall there has been a drop in drinking and smoking in this age group across Europe with 96,000 students surveyed in 35 countries.
For drugs, Portugal has always scored low, apart from prescription drugs where a worrying trend is developing, especially among girls taking medically prescribed antidepressants and tranquillizers.
One of the problems is the lack of psychotherapists within the public health service, resulting in Doctors prescribing drugs to treat the symptoms not the cause.
