Michael Eskindarov
Questions
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Commentary on drug situation in the Russian Federation.
Government of the country pays a lot of attention to the issue of combating drug trafficking and abuse. Questions about combating drug trafficking and abuse has repeatedly been discussed at meetings of the Governmental Commission for Drug Control.
This problem and the need to develop measures to deal with it have been referred to by the President of the Russian Federation in letters to the State Duma of Federal Assembly of Russian Federation every year.
The concept of public policy in the sphere of drug abuse prevention and prevention of drug trafficking that will work until 2014 is directed towards strengthening preventive component, improving resistance among youth and adolescents to non-medical drug use, improving law enforcement combating drug-related crimes, particularly it its most dangerous forms, including drug trafficking.
However, as evidenced by the actual situation, the organization of this work is not carried out in needed level. In practice, the criminal liability for drug trafficking is imposed on distributors while the danger comes mainly from drug trade itself.
With regards to drug dealers (criminal leaders) , legal grounds for their punishment already exist, but they are rarely applied.
There are several models of social control over the drug situation:
A. Liberal. Incentive policy;
B. Repressive or restrictive policy;
C. Prohibitive and restrictive policies.
Unfortunately, forces advocating drug legalization and liberalization of the state and society control over drug trafficking are consolidated. They hide their real motives behind slogans of democracy and violation of human.
According to initiator of such forces, repressive measures will not succeed, and will contribute to the development of black market of drugs. However, we cannot agree with this approach. As we know, repressive, and not liberal methods, have helped to solve drug problem in the postwar period in Japan. In 20th-30th years this kind of policy has also significantly reduced drug use in Germany, United States, and especially in China. And there aren’t any significant examples where liberal method has succeeded in combating drug addiction.
In the Russian Federation, taking into account social phenomena and mentality of the population, repressive measures unfortunately are the main ones in combating drug addiction across the country. Weakest spots in the fight against drug addiction among the population are measures against officials who, due to their official position, are accomplices of drug trafficking, or condone this evil. In this context it seems appropriate to introduce criminal liability over people who, use their official position, for example, cover drug traffickers, or take no action to deal with them – thus tolerate narcotization.
Such actions should be punished even more severely than actions of drug traffickers. Indeed, in practice, traffickers – are drug addicts themselves who sre sick, unemployed and have no legal income. They are forced to sell drugs to get the dose for themselves. Forced treatment should be applied for those people. This will require substantial financial cost from the state and therefore this should be implemented in stages, starting from young people.
Compulsory treatment can be introduced for juveniles, and then for young people unemployed at the time of the detention. In order to deal effectively with narcotization, there should be , group of people including state and municipal employees, police officers, judges, prosecutors, as well as school principals and other workers of educational and social institutions, should be defined who will be obligated to oppose drug trafficking.
It case of failure to prevent, detect, uncover and suppress acts of illicit drug distribution and use, and those people s should become subjects to disciplinary, administrative or criminal liability. This also should include managers of credit institutions engaged in financial transactions with funds derived from drug trafficking. Any such operations to the countries of production and transit of drugs should be recorded, and their recipients should be identified. If the funds are sent in large amounts or systematically, legitimacy of such transfers should be checked.
The work of “Rosfinmonitoring” should be strengthened. Responsibility for the quality of surveillance activities in compliance with drug laws of the prosecutor's office should also be increased. With regard to preventing the spread of drug use among under age youth, continuous testing of adolescents should be recognized as the most effective measures. Testing should be carried out by drug treatment specialists and psychologists in educational institutions, leisure centers, clinics.
Previous testings show effectiveness of this method in identifying people who use drugs or are prone to this. The test itself takes 15-20 minutes and specialists carry out confidential conversations with teenagers and personally explain danger of drug abuse. In the regions, community councils for the prevention of drug abuse should be created under the guidance of Public Chamber or the Interagency Commission on Crime Prevention of the Government of the Russian Federation), which should include psychologists, teachers, doctors, drug treatment experts, representatives of the administration of the city (district), law enforcement officials and public members. Such councils should introduce control over the activities of officers engaged in prevention of drug trafficking and members of the Board shall have the right to receive complete information about measures taken to respond to citizens' statements about the facts of illegal use by teenagers and drug distribution among them.
State Council should determine the most effective forms to combat addiction among youth and provide funding and all kinds of scientific-methodological and logistical and advertising support.
