DRUGS: SIX MILLION RUSSIANS ARE "CRIMINALS", THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF POLITICAL PRISONERS IN OUR COUNTRY, MEANWHILE THE GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO PUT OUT THE FIRE WITH THE GASOLINE

PRESS-RELEASE

Moscow, November 6, 2000

DECLARATION OF NIKOLAY KHRAMOV, RUSSIAN COORDINATOR OF THE RADICAL PARTY

"Not less than two million Russians systematically use illegal drugs. Four million more tried them. In total it makes six million, 4% of Russia's population, including oldmen and babies. These are figures announced on Friday by the General Prosecutor Ustinov during a meeting in the General Prosecutor's Office. I suppose, however, that these figures are understated: other official estimations have been many times published in the media, and according to them not less than 10 million our citizens at least once tried illegal substances, first of all - marijuana.

According to the same prosecutor's statistics, the number of drug related crimes increased threefold in last five years. What are these crimes, what are these criminals? It's more than half a million young people who passed through investigation isolation wards and prisons for illegal purchase and posession of drugs for personal use. In other words - simple consumers who are guilty of posessing, purchase or "sale" of half a gramme of marijuana or one thousandth gramme of heroin.

I don't know whether other figures were spoken of at the Friday meeting at comrade Ustinov's office: the number of HIV cases in Russia incresed in 1999 more than twofold, 90% of new cases, according to the data of the Ministry of Health, are consumers of injectable drugs, "even one molecule" of which is prohibited (according to deputy head of the UBNON (Department for fight against drugs and drug related crimes) general Tantsorov).

The General Prosecutor confesses: "The process of narcotizaton doesn't diminishes, and we fail to create adequate measures to counteract the drug crime". The information agencies report that there exist drafts of the measures to fight drug crime in the Prosecutor's Office, but it remains unknown what will these measures be like. It isn't difficult to suppose, though: it's the question of further reinforcement of the prohibitionist policy, repressives changes to the law, new arrests of drug consumers.

The Ministry of the Interior, Prosecutor's Office, government, parliamentaries make everything to turn every tenth young Russian into a criminal. The narco-militia mafia doesn't want to hear anything not only about the successful six-years Swiss experiment on the controlled distribution of medicinal heroin among the addicts, but even about programs of free distribution of disposable syringes.

An explosion of the AIDS epidemy in Russia is the consequence of their stupid and criminal in the direct sense of the word policy. Owing to them new tens of thousands young people are doomed to become clients of narcomafias and to die from an overdose or from the AIDS. Their policy - policy of repressive prohibitionism - isn't just erroneous and counterproductive. It's a crime in the most direct juridical sense of this word.

Today there are hundreds of thousands political prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of young boys and girls who are for years leaved to rot alive in prison for half a gramme of cannabis - they are real political prisoners, victims of criminal prohibitionist policies. However, none of the Russian political figures did remember of these political prisoners during the meeting to mark October 30 near the Solovetsky stone or in the State Duma.

To snatch millions our citizens from the paws of narcomafias, to release hundreds of thousands of new political prisoners, to save lives of tens of thousands of people (not only addicts - the AIDS dosn't spare anybody!), to undermine economical and political power of narcomafias in our country - all this is possible only having done with the prohibitionist policies.

That is:

1) to stop persecution of the consumers of illegal drugs;

2) to draw a clear distinction between such dangerous substances as heroin and marijuna - a substance less dangerous than tobacco and alcohol, and to legalize completely production, sale and consumption of cannabis and its derivates (hashish, marijuana);

3) to begin without delay to carry out in full extent policy of "harm reduction" including implementation in Russia of the Swiss experiment on controlled distribution of medicinal heroin among addicts.

Meanwhile the Russian government continues to put out the fire with the gasoline

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