A seaside party on the Abruzzo coast ended in the emergency room as ten adolescents, aged 13 to 16, were admitted in alcoholic coma during Vasto Marina’s ‘Notte Rosa’. A similar scare hit the Brindisi area. As Italy grapples with ‘mala movida’, what are young people trying to fill with alcohol?

Pescara – What began as a summer celebration along the glittering promenade of Vasto Marina turned into a night in hospital for ten teenagers. According to local health and public‑safety officials, emergency crews ferried boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 16 to the San Pio Hospital after they were found unconscious or severely disoriented during the Adriatic resort’s Pink Night festivities. Doctors stabilised the minors with urgent therapy and notified families. By morning, most were recovering; the episode left a bitter aftertaste in a town that had invited residents and holidaymakers to dance until late.

Police and medics described a familiar pattern: clusters of young people converging on stretches of beach and side streets just off the main seafront, mixing high‑proof spirits with energy drinks, swapping bottles and shots at pace. As music thumped from stages and kiosks, callouts multiplied. ‘It escalated fast,’ one responder said of the moment when several teens collapsed in quick succession. The sight of ambulance lights cutting through a sea of pink balloons became the night’s defining image.

The scare was not confined to Abruzzo. In the Brindisi area, a 13‑year‑old girl was found unconscious on the sand after what investigators believe was heavy drinking at another beach party. She was revived and kept under observation. Together, the incidents have reignited a national debate that has simmered for years: how to protect minors in a summer nightlife economy that increasingly spills onto public spaces.

Local administrators in Abruzzo and Puglia, where authorities have battled the so‑called mala movida, say the problem is less about one night than about the fragile scaffolding around youth leisure. When music, brands and social media call young audiences to the coast, the public sector often struggles to keep pace with crowd management, age checks and harm reduction. ‘We cannot police adolescence out of existence,’ a municipal official said. ‘But we can design environments that make bad choices less catastrophic.’

In Vasto, organisers had mapped out entertainment zones along the marina. Yet the heaviest drinking, residents say, happened in the shadows: car parks, dunes and piers, where mixed groups drifted beyond the glare of stage lights and volunteers. Shopkeepers report that some minors arrived already intoxicated, likely after ‘pre‑loading’ with cheap spirits purchased days earlier. The diffusion of off‑premise alcohol sales—at kiosks, minimarkets and online deliveries—has made enforcement a moving target for local police.

Doctors at San Pio warn that the clinical picture is changing. ‘It is not just beer,’ one emergency physician said. ‘We are seeing combinations with caffeinated drinks and, at times, tranquilliser residues that amplify risk.’ Treating adolescents in alcoholic coma demands rapid airway management, fluid resuscitation and monitoring for hypoglycaemia and hypothermia. Beyond the acute phase, clinicians face parents who oscillate between shock, shame and anger—at their children, their peers, the city and themselves.

If a single cause is elusive, the social context is less so. Italy’s youth are navigating a complicated post‑pandemic landscape: stretched family finances, precarious summer jobs, and a digital culture that compresses friendship, performance and comparison into the same screen. On nights like these, alcohol serves as passport and anaesthetic—permission to belong, a quick dimmer on anxiety, a shortcut through awkwardness. Adolescents who binge are rarely chasing taste; they are chasing a feeling and the fleeting status it confers.

Public health experts call the phenomenon ‘cannibalisation of weekends’: more events, more marketing, more pressure to ‘show up’. The result can be a spiral: organisers raise the volume to compete; teens raise their intake to keep pace; authorities raise patrols to contain frayed edges. Somewhere between, the line between festival and free‑for‑all blurs. When that happens, the bill lands at the ER.

What are young Italians trying to fill with alcohol? Interviews with youth workers and educators point to four gaps. The first is purpose: summer can be a desert between exams and September, with few structured activities that feel cool rather than remedial. The second is place: safe, supervised spaces are rare along crowded waterfronts, and rules around beaches and public plazas are patchy. The third is skills: adolescents absorb endless content about wellness yet often lack practiced strategies to refuse, delay or downshift in the moment. The fourth is trust: many teens believe adults will punish first and listen later, so they hide risk until it is too late.

Policy, too, has homework. Festivals that draw minors need clear, pre‑agreed safety plans: designated ‘chill‑out’ areas, free water points, and roving first‑aid teams trained in adolescent care. Bar staff and kiosks should be trained and incentivised to check IDs and refuse service—supported by visible, even‑handed enforcement that targets sellers over kids. Local authorities can restrict late‑night off‑premise alcohol sales on event routes and deploy plain‑clothes officers to deter illegal vendors. Parents and schools can coordinate pre‑event briefings that speak plainly about danger signs and how to seek help.

Communities elsewhere in Europe have trialled peer‑to‑peer ‘party ambassadors’—young adults in identifiable vests who move through crowds, offering water, phone‑charging and non‑judgmental help. Data from those schemes show fewer ambulance calls and faster referrals for those in distress. In coastal towns, a version tailored to beach settings—teams that know the dunes and jetties and can spot trouble before it crowds the shoreline—could make a dent.

Law enforcement cannot carry this alone. Mayors, festival organisers and public‑transport operators all shape the risk curve: how long people linger, how they get home, how easy it is to drift into an unlit pocket where risky behaviour accelerates. Night‑bus services and temporary lighting sound prosaic; they are, in practice, harm‑reduction tools. So are early‑evening, alcohol‑free zones where under‑16s can mingle with music and sport before the nightly crescendo.

The economics matter, too. Small seaside towns make their summer margins between June and August. Retailers are reluctant to lose sales, and over‑zealous crackdowns can push youth gatherings to less visible—and less safe—spots. The test for policy is not maximum restriction but smarter design: guiding flows, smoothing pressure points and creating incentives for businesses that co‑invest in safety, from sponsored water taps to discounts for soft‑drink combos.

Italy has a rich tradition of intergenerational life in public. The goal should be to reclaim that on summer nights, not to retreat from it. Young people will gather, and many will drink. The question is whether communities can lower the stakes so that curiosity does not curdle into calamity. After Vasto and Brindisi, the answer cannot wait for another ambulance siren to cut through the music.

By dawn on the Abruzzo coast, the promenade was quiet again, the sand freshly raked. Parents hovered by hospital beds, texting friends and employers, bargaining with themselves about new rules. The teenagers slept, lucky this time. If the adults mean to learn anything from the night, it is that safety is not the enemy of celebration. It is the precondition for letting young people grow up with fewer scars.