Police at school, to talk about drugs. “We’ve come to scare you”

“We’ve come to scare you, or at least, to make you think about the dangers of certain substances.” This is how Leopoldo Testa, the Deputy Commissioner of Varese, began, when talking to students at the Cairoli High School, in a meeting on addiction.

“For years, we’ve underestimated drugs and their effects, especially on young people of your age. And then things like that happen,” Testa said, while holding up a newspaper cutting, which spoke about the case of a 15-year-old tortured by some of his peers. The meeting served to explain how “consumers are much younger and they already have their first experiences in middle school”, and “when certain limits are taken away, the danger is not that they might shift down to cigarettes, but that they might shift up to heavier drugs.”

Precisely for these reasons, “I’m here to tell you that the police are present not only to repress, but also to be by your side, and be a reference point for situations of hardship or need. We’ll always be here, you shouldn’t be afraid of us.”

The Deputy Commissioner’s audience was of children from classes 1C and 2E, who will be attending a course on legality. “The students are going to participate in a competition organised by the association Pappaluga, to create some T-shirts against violence,” explained Ms Monica Ioli, the legality contact in the school. “We wanted to understand what violence among young people is, by investigating juvenile delinquency in drug use and cyberbullying,”