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The federal government does not know how widespread abuse and dependence on medication among minors is in the country.
This emerges from the answer to a small question from the FDP parliamentary group that WELT has received.
According to this, there is hardly any data on the subject, and the available data allow “no conclusions”.
Last year it was found that pain medication abuse among younger people had recently increased and in some age groups is a significantly greater problem than the use of cannabis.
A clear line of how to deal with it and how to recapture the trend has apparently been missing so far.
The federal government refers to individual campaigns and projects as well as a website.
However, there are obviously no measurable goals on which prevention and addiction support could be oriented.
The answer to the question in question is only abstractly that the aim of drug and addiction policy is to “reduce the consumption of legal and illegal addictive substances”.
In addition, the aim is to "improve information".
The "early detection and early intervention" of dependencies should also be strengthened - but "especially in older people".
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The fall phenomenon in particular shows that the consumption of psychotropic drugs can become dangerous in old age.
It is well known that falls bring a high risk of injuries in old and very old people - in addition to decreasing muscles and balance or diseases such as osteoarthritis and cardiovascular problems, psychoactive drugs are also a risk factor.
For example, falls are more common in people between 65 and 79 years of age when they are taking such medication.
According to a model calculation, the risk increases by as much as 64 percent.
However, the Federal Government cannot say how widespread the consumption of such drugs is at the moment among people over 64 years of age.
There is also apparently no general annual trend data on drug abuse, no current figures on the simultaneous use of several drugs or those that are broken down by federal state.
Wieland Schinnenburg describes such data gaps as “indictment of poverty”.
The spokesman for drug and addiction policy of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag complains that the federal government is “in fact not” dealing with the issue.
"It is particularly bad that (the federal government) apparently does not know anything about drug abuse among children and adolescents," Schinnenburg told WELT.
If no relevant data are available, effective prevention and addiction support are not possible either: "It is therefore not surprising that (one) does not set any goals here."