For the past five years, UN experts have called Finland the happiest country in the world due to its developed healthcare and education system, low crime rate, and biodiversity. However, behind the exemplary pictures of the villages lies a growing problem – youth drug addiction.
Finland is the European leader in terms of mortality among young drug addicts. Since the 2000s, the number of drug-related deaths here has tripled.
In 2022, almost a third of drug-related deaths in the country were under the age of 25. On average, drug addicts die ten years earlier in Finland than in other EU countries.
Many overdoses are due to the presence of dangerous mixtures in the body, such as buprenorphine, benzodiazepines, and alcohol.
“I first started smoking marijuana at 12, and at 16 I was already making opium tea, then came the turn of ecstasy, amphetamines, and everything else. When I was about 20, the wave of dying began. The guys fell into the graves like apples from a tree”, – 25-year-old Finn Niko told the correspondent of the TV channel.
In Finland, only 20 percent of heavy drug addicts receive treatment, compared to 70 percent in neighboring Sweden.