DRUGS/MOSCOW: NEW DISASTER HAD FALLED UPON THE CITY - THE HEAD OF MOSCOW'S MUNICIPALITY YURY LUZHKOV IS STEPPING ONTO THE PATH OF DRUG WAR. MEANWHILE THE CAPITAL NEEDS A REAL ACTIONS TO DECREASE THE LOSSES INSTEAD OF LUZHKOV'S MARTIAL SCREAMS AND WARLIKE FACE PAINTINGS.

DECLARATION OF NIKOLAJ KHRAMOV, RUSSIAN COORDINATOR FOR THE TRANSNATIONAL RADICAL PARTY

Moscow, July 22, 1998. "New disaster had falled upon the city: during the last session of Moscow's Municipality its Head, Yury Luzhkov, had officially declared the start of the drug war within the belonging to him territory. The proposed beginning is "to wipe off the Earth's face" any bar where was at least once sold anything that seems to be a forbidden drug, and also - of course! - "to put the mass information, especially the TV, on its place". Luzhkov's being particularly annoyed by the fact that Russia is not Singapore, where an Australian girl was executed for posessing drugs seven years ago.

Well, the praiseworthy intention "to burn the school and to abolish the sciences" of Moscow's state head deserves the pity. However, an extraordinary maliciousness like executions in the middle of the Red Square for "another way of smoking" should not be expected. It's most likely that Luzhkow will only "swallow the bird", as it established in well-known Russian tradition.

Meanwhile the prohibited drugs and related problems are indeed one of the most important troubles in Moscow. The city takes the first place among all of the Russia's regions by the number of those infected by AIDS, and the main way of infection spreading is injections with dirty syringes that are often used by drug addicts. This is the direct consequence of the criminal politics of the municipal structures, that not even point to any measures of decreasing the losses that caused by drugs. The bus where the already used syringes are exchanged to the new ones, functioning in St.Petersburg, is one drop in the ocean, but even that drop is impossible in today's Luzhkov's Moscow.

Moscow needs not the new provincial edition of the war on drugs that is already lost in the world, but a new pragmatic look on the problem. The capital does not need Luzhkov's martial screams and warlike face paintings, it needs real and urgent actions to decrease the drug-related losses, actions that can save real lifes of the real young citizens."

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