The romantic notion of Italian children sitting down with their families over a bottle of wine at dinner is being replaced by a harsher reality common elsewhere in the Western world: crowds of rowdy, binge-drinking youths causing havoc downtown.

Reuters reported Sept. 28 that while Italians have long believed that moderate alcohol use is essential for good health, more young people are drinking to get drunk rather than just sipping wine or grappa at mealtime.

Italian media now regularly refer to the "Saturday Night Massacre" in which young people die from drunk driving, and lawmakers have called for raising the legal drinking age from 16 to 18 and lowering the blood-alcohol threshold for presumption of drunk driving. Research conducted in 2007 found that 38 percent of Italian students ages 15-16 engaged in binge drinking during the past month, up about 23 percent since 1995.

"We have not yet reached levels seen in the U.K., but in five years we'll be there. We are not that far off," said adolescent-health expert Luca Bernardo of Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan. Bernardo said that he has often seen children as young as ages 11-13 in the emergency room, which weekly treats cases of severe intoxication.

Italian health experts say that alcohol advertising, the availability of alcopops and other youth-oriented drinks, and psychological problems all play a role in the trend toward binge drinking. Milan recently began imposing stiff fines on alcohol possession and use under age 16, and on those who sell alcohol to minors.