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On August 16, two young men were found dead in an apartment in Zollikerberg. As a report from the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Zurich shows, the two died as a result of a drug overdose. The 15-year-olds are said to have mixed different drugs, causing them to have respiratory paralysis.
Addictive substance expert Domenic Schnoz warns that mixed use of narcotics and pain relievers is increasing among young people.
Domenic Schnoz
Expert in addictive substances
SRF News: Is what happened in Zollikerberg an isolated tragic incident or is there an increase in drug abuse?
Dominic Schnoz: In conclusion, I cannot answer this question. There is currently no research on this. However, there is evidence that these cases are increasing. According to one study, the rate increased from 2.8 percent to 4.5 percent in 2018. But I must say that more research is urgently needed on the issue of mixed use among young people.
So no one knows exactly how common this phenomenon is?
If you extrapolate the percentage from 4.5, you get one young person per school class who has already experimented with medication as a drug. This study focused on 15-year-olds, that is, very young. Furthermore, the number of unreported cases should be high. That is disturbing.
What can you do in prevention so that there are as few cases as possible?
What catches our attention: Many young people think that drugs are less dangerous than other drugs. When we talk to young people, we can say that the inhibition threshold is lower. You will swallow a sedative pill faster than using cocaine. Kids don’t know the risks associated with mixed use and they don’t know how to handle substances. It takes a lot of educational work.
But is it not only the young who know very little, apparently the specialized departments also have very little information?
That is true and makes prevention work difficult. We must urgently investigate mixed use: who takes drugs as intoxicants, why they do it, where they do it, etc. To do this, together with the Swiss Institute for Research on Addictions and Health, we submitted an application to the Federal Office for Health and Money for a study on mixed use among young people.
The interview was conducted by Dominik Steiner.
