One-third of Milan tweens are alcoholic?

MILAN. The city of Milan, in northern Italy, has for the first time enacted strict legislation on underage consumption of alcohol, revealing that as many as one-third of local 11-year-olds have drinking problems. Despite the threat of heavy fines, however, many bar owners are refusing to abide by the unlikely restriction, refusing to act as “alcohol police,” the BBC reports.   

The crackdown has come as quite a shock to native Italians, to whom underage drinking is not even so much as a concept. Indeed, Italian children were historically nurtured on a steady diet of wine, as opposed to water, which was more likely to be polluted.