Social media makes drugs more accessible to young people

Social media has made drugs more accessible to young people, ERR reported, while police say alcohol remains far more widespread among minors.

Viking Security said it had seen an increasing number of cases this year in which minors openly sold or used not only cannabis but also stronger drugs in shopping centres and entertainment venues.

“Young people’s drug use is immediately very visible because it affects them much more strongly than alcohol and changes their behaviour,” said Sander Nurgamaa, head of the security company’s video surveillance centre.

He described an incident at a shopping centre in Tartu in which a group of teenagers went into a toilet. One of them collapsed after they came out. A later inspection found a pouch containing white powder residue inside an oral tobacco tin.

Studies by the National Institute for Health Development show that 30 percent of minors have used drugs during their lifetime. The institute’s head of drug-related matters, Katri Abel-Ollo, said very few young people avoid alcohol but use drugs instead.

“It is often not a choice between one or the other,” Abel-Ollo said. She added that the number of users had fallen over the past 12 months.

Police said alcohol was still considerably more common than drugs among young people. “Young people found intoxicated by alcohol certainly outnumber those found intoxicated by drugs,” said Rait Pikaro, head of the criminal bureau at the Police and Border Guard Board’s Northern Prefecture.

Security officials, police and the institute agreed, however, that drugs had become very easy to obtain. While alcohol is bought in shops, criminals sell drugs online, often using social media messaging apps, hidden drop-off points and cryptocurrency payments.

Pikaro said this posed a greater threat to young people than the street dealers of the past because transactions often no longer involved direct contact between people.