2026-10-01
4 分钟The Economist.
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In The Godfather, Don Vito Corleone refuses to engage in the heroin trade because he considers it a dirty business.
Outside of Hollywood scripts, such scruples are rare among mafiosi.
Yet police in Italy are coming to the conclusion
that a real-life version of this plot point may have played out there over the past decade.
The country's mafias seem to have collaborated to keep fentanyl out of their territory.
The theory could help explain Italy's strangely low rate of fentanyl overdoses.
In 2024, the synthetic opiate,
which is about 100 times stronger than morphine, was detected in just two fatal intoxications in Italy.
Germany had 95. America had almost 48,000.
That cannot be explained by Italy's overall drug consumption levels.
Some 2.1% of young Italian adults use cocaine in a given year,
according to European figures, compared with 2.2% in Germany.
Its estimated rate of high-risk opioid use is roughly twice the German one.
In 2024, with fentanyl starting to appear more often in Europe, Italy's government unveiled a plan to counter it.
But Alfredo Montevano, the top health ministry official for drug policy,