SUMMARY: An interview, taken from Nikolaj Khramov by Vjacheslav Kuricyn and published in the Matador magazine. The matter is about concrete antiprohibitionist proposals of the Radical Party (legalization of soft drugs, controlled distribution of heroin, decriminalization of personal use of any substance), as well as about the recent antiprohibitionist initiatives undertaken by Radicals in Russia, in particular - about the inquiry to the Constitutional Court on the new drug law.
(MATADOR, No. 3/98, August 15, 1998)
NIKOLAJ KHRAMOV [born in 1963] - Russian coordinator of the Transnational Radical Party which struggles for freedom of Tibet, for a recognition of Esperanto as an official international language, for abolishing death penalty and for liberalization of policy concerning drugs. The last one is especially urgent for Russia because in the spring the new monstrous law on drugs admitting compulsory medical examination of everyone who would seem suspicious to the guards and forbidding "propagation of any advantages of use of single narcotic drugs" has entered in force. That means that it is impossible now to write, that marijuana is useful, and heroin if harmful. Fascism on march. In June the RADICAL PARTY has carried out on Pushkin square a rally under the slogan "Legalization Of Drugs Is A Fatal Impact On Drug Mafia". It is the first action of such kind in Russia.
Interview of Nikolaj KHRAMOV with Vjacheslav KURICYN
QUESTION: Nikolaj, what do you think: shall we yet live when in at least hemp will be legalized in Russia?
ANSWER: I think, yes. We should.
Q: And what should be dynamics of this process? You see, even marijuana is referred to harmful substances by the United Nations, and until the respective lists will not be reconsidered...
A: Yes, certainly, it is necessary to change these conventions. Marijuana there is in the first table of UN as an especially dangerous drug, and it is of course a misunderstanding. But, as shows the example of Holland, where the hemp consumption is tolerated, it is possible even at the national level to carry out little bit other policy.
Q: But in our country the policy is only worsening. What concrete steps are you going to undertake in a near future?
A: We try now - through the members of the State Duma - to protest against the law in the Constitutional Court. It's easy to do: it has obvious contradictions to the Constitution minimum in six positions. But to submit such an inquiry, the signatures of 90 MPs are needed. We already have collected already 45 signatures of the most different fractions. In September we shall renew this business, and I think that the necessary amount will be achieved. I hope, many signatures will come from "Jabloko" and LDPR. These two fractions totally did not vote for the law. Besides, the personal attitude of Mr. Zhirinovsky to this problem is known...
Q: ?!
A: He told more than one time that soft drugs should be legalized.
Q: And what provisions of the law are you going to challenge in the Constitutional Court?
A: Compulsory medical examination. That item, according to which the lists, where it is indicated what quantity of a drug to consider large, are to be adopted by the governmental decision. But they should be adopted by the federal law: in the Constitution is written that any restriction of citizens' rights can base only on a federal law. By the way, just recently Mr. Havel has returned back in the parliament the law on drugs exactly because list of substances were given to the competence of government... The next stage is an amendment to the Criminal Code, providing that crimes not related to drug trade would not be punished by imprisonment...
Q: But amendments in a law can be presented only by members of parliament?
A: The party collects materials, works with the deputies, and formally inquiries are being presented by Valerij Borscev, member of "Jabloko" fraction. He has already submitted these amendments in Council of Duma... And in the autumn the draft bill on the amendments and changes for the law on drugs will be tabled...
Q: Three main goals of your party: legalization of hemp, abolishing of the criminal and administrative responsibility for the use of drugs and the application of the Swiss experience, where a heroin addict can receive in hospital the doze, not contacting mafia and not risking to prick a dirty product. Do you have any information on the attitude of the society to these ideas?
A: Unfortunately, I don't know, whether any public opinion poll on this theme has carried out. We have carried out street referendum asking the Moscow passers about their attitude to these three proposals. In favour were from fifty up to seventy percents. It is certainly not a VCIOM poll, but the figures impress.
Q: There is any information about how many people sit in prisons for hemp?
A: According to the Interior Ministry statistics, in 1997 there were charged criminally for drugs 102,000 persons. The most part of these cases, certainly, concerns marijuana: its traffic is huge. And among these 102,000 only 8,2 percents are charged for selling, others are simple consumers. A typical case: in August, 1997 in Moscow subway police have searched a guy, Vladimir Golubnichij, they have found in his pocket 1 (one) gramme of hashish. He has been sentenced to six months of imprisonment for storage of large amount of a drug: you see, one gramme is a large amount. Some days before his release from prison he has died in prison hospital.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
VCIOM - All-Russian Center for public opinion studies
