Moscow Times

March 4, 1998

Report Warns of Drugs Threat to Russia

By Valeria Korchagina

STAFF WRITER

For more articles from The Moscow Times, check out their website at www.moscowtimes.ru

A major new report on Russia's drug problem, unveiled to the public Tuesday, said that drug use and the narcotics trade are growing so fast they pose a threat to the future of the nation.

The report was commissioned by Vladimir Gusinsky, a media magnate and owner of the NTV television station, and prepared by the nongovernmental Council on External and Defense Policy in conjunction with the Interior Ministry.

The 14-page report covered all aspects of drug abuse from provincial drug addicts to international mafia cartels which run drug pedaling operations in Russia.

It said that over the past five years the number of people in Russia using illegal drugs had risen by 3 1/2 times. The report went on to predict that within a year the number of drug addicts would exceed 3 million.

The report's authors stressed that drug abuse has become a nation-wide problem. Illegal substances were viewed as fashionable by many young people, the report said, and it called on the government, together with the mass media, to work to dispel this belief.

Gusinsky said that by commissioning the report he wanted to attract attention to the problem which is already blighting many Russian families.

"I asked my son ... how difficult it is to get drugs in Moscow and he said that it is easier than buying a pack of cigarettes in the evening," Gusinsky said. However, law and order officials and narcotics experts attending the presentation of the report could not reach a consensus about how best to tackle the problem.

According to Sergei Karaganov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Europe, because Russia is relatively new to wide-scale drug abuse, there is little experience of dealing with the problem.

"While in the East drugs have been known for thousands of years and in the West there are some quite effective methods created by now to fight the problem, Russia remains in neither, in some kind of a black hole," he said.

Igor Malashenko, general director of NTV and a member of the council that drafted the report, was even more pessimistic and outspoken. "We simply don't know what to do," Malashenko said.

Government officials responsible for tackling the tide of illegal narcotics said their work was hampered by political obstacles, outdated methodology, poor coordination between government departments, and -- inevitably -- lack of funds.

"I spoke to my colleagues from the FBI and they told me that the U.S.A. could not get to grips with the problem until all 52 relevant State Departments were united in the same program," said General-Lieutenant Anatoly Safonov of the Federal Security Service, or FSB. "Mind you, it took them 15 years to do that," he added.

Mikhail Vanin, the head of the State Customs Committee's anti-drug department, said that his force's attempts to prevent the smuggling of narcotics into Russia was complicated by the customs union between Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

"We are on the verge of a situation when the unified customs zone can turn into a unified drug zone," Vanin said.

NTV came under a storm of criticism last year from the Russian Orthodox Church for broadcasting the controversial Martin Scorsese movie "The Last Temptation of Christ" and is badly in need of some positive public exposure.

The station started its own anti-drugs campaign earlier this year consisting of a series of hard-hitting anti-drugs commercials and the show "Sumerki," or Dusk. Malashenko also said that NTV and the Media-Most holding company are planning to run a contest for the best concept for an anti-drug media campaign.

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Johnson's Russia List

#2092

4 March 1998

davidjohnson@erols.com