Presentation

      The system has several signalling units located on the national territory. Those units are meant to signal problems and drug related phenomena happening on the territory and able to cause harm to health (i.e. increase of the percentage of drugs active principle, particularly toxic substances, new drugs, special prices for teens at school…). Signalling organizations may come from the public health sector (118, emergency units, hospitals, laboratories…), from law enforcement agencies, mass media, schools, body schools and single persons as well. In order to facilitate the collection of information, the communication with the central system, installed at the Addiction Department ULSS 20, Verona, Italy, is made through a “multichannel system”. That is, it is possible to send information by using fax, short text messages, e-mail, ordinary mail or the web site.

      The system processes the incoming information. The information is collected by skilled operators who evaluate and assess the gravity of the information. They do that in order to estimate the opportunity to send possible “alerts” to operative units meant to protect public health. The system used to communicate those “alerts” is a multi-channel one (fax, short text messages, e-mail, ordinary mail or the web site). Recipients are health units, law enforcement agencies, laboratories, mass media, discos, schools, body schools, etc. They have the responsibility to organize a proper back-action to avoid harm to the population as much as they can. Back-actions must be quick and effective. The system presents a groundbreaking functionality: alerts may be selective and addressed not only to the whole national territory, but also to a single area, where there is a high possibility to widespread drugs according to drug traffic road maps and dealing.

    Nowadays, the illicit system for widely spreading and dealing drugs on the national territory uses new psychoactive substances able to breed more and more dangerous consequences to the health of people, especially the youth. Harms may show up in several ways, in very different times (short term, long term) and with dissimilar gravity (from instant death to chronic deficit of intellectual functions).

    One of the most serious problems to enhance effective prevention programs is the possibility to have early information about “new” substances, or new mix of substances or new pattern of consumption and association, about their entrance on the illicit market and their negative effects on public health.

    It is very difficult to understand, in advance, when those substances enter the illicit market and, therefore, to build up preventive policies. Very often, phenomenic evidences related to new drugs or new pattern of consumption suddenly come out and they can be considered “sentinel events”. As a consequence, they can evolve in dangerous risky clinical situations about possible consumption of new drugs or variations of “old drugs”.

    We are also assisting to a strong variation of drugs containing more and more active principle. To complicate the scenario, it is the birth of poli-consumption habits, causing extremely dangerous mixes between alcohol and drugs or drugs and drugs. These trends are difficultly detectable but it is possible to have news about them listening to many addicted people attended by the health services.

    European, National and regional organizations, dealing with the activation and the maintenance of programs for prevention, cure and rehabilitation of drug consumers, are interested in carry out interventions and systems able to reduce negative consequences of the above mentioned phenomena.

    This path has led to the necessity to develop a project aimed at carrying out a Drugs Early Warning System together with a Fast Back-Action. In fact, it is not sufficient to simply early signal the phenomenon but it is also necessary to manage a fast back-action through the active and quick involvement of all those organizations in charge for public health defence and promotion.

    The Drugs Early Warning System project has been formulated according to the clues of a Scientific-Technical Committee, gathered in Roma at the Ministry of Health on 27.02.2006, and to the advices given by the participants to the Drugs Early Warning System Workshop, held in Verona on 20.02.2007.

    This space is meant to be a meeting point for all those who want to take part in carrying out the system and is also aimed at spreading information and news useful to the creation of an effective Drugs Early Warning System in Italy with the support of the Italian Anti-drugs Policies Department, Presidency of the Council of Ministries.

For further information, please, contact:
SAPD Secretary, Via Germania n. 20,
37136 Verona
E-mail: allerta@dronet.org
Tel: +39 045.8076278
Fax: +39 045.8076272