Russia defies growing consensus with declaration of 'total war on drugs'

Source: Guardian

Drug dealers are to be "treated like serial killers" and could be sent to forced labour camps under harsh laws being drawn up by Russia's Kremlin-controlled parliament.

Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the state duma, the lower house, said a "total war on drugs" was needed to stem a soaring abuse rate driven by the flow of Afghan heroin through central Asia to Europe.

Russia has as many as 6 million addicts (one in 25 people). Every year 100,000 people die from using drugs, Gryzlov said in a newspaper. The scale of the problem "threatens Russia's gene pool", he said. "We are standing on the edge of a precipice. Either we squash drug addiction or it will destroy us."

This year, President Dmitry Medvedev said drug abuse was cutting up to three percentage points off economic growth.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/08/russia-total-war-on-drugs

....from profiting on the drug trade when and where they can....

It's a much bigger problem there than drug addiction.

Average life expectancy is actually DECLINING in Russia, largely because of the bottle.

because they've got to love this kind of draconian policy.

It will only serve to alienate the Russian People from their government, have a corrupting influence on their police/prison system as they seek ways to profit from this war, drive the people underground and increase the power and wealth of organized crime.

Other than that, their short sighted, hard rule policies will advance the spread of HIV infection.

Drug addiction is a medical problem, and adult, non-violent drug use should be an educational, medical, personal privacy issue, I believe that's the best policy for reducing drug use and addiction.

Going Putin's hard line route is as the cold wind trying to force a man to take his coat off, he will only grip it tighter.

Thanks for the thread, LetTimmySmoke.

And although this has slowed their drug problem, it has not curtailed it. My wife lived there for a couple of years and said she was offered various illegal drugs -- most often marijuana -- in every city she was in.

Southern China, like most of Southeast Asia, has an enormous and quickly growing problem with meth, which often doesn't make western media (I assume it's not "glamorous" like heroin). The ephedrine needed for production is readily available in a common indigenous weed and there's no regs on red phosphorous, so Thailand and Hong Kong/Shinzhen are becoming major distribution centers for the Pacific Rim. Plus the organized cxriminal elements were already in place for the heroin trade, which has shifted to to the west of afghanistan since our invasion.

Meth is probably more profitable for them in the long run, too: cheaper to make and transport, and statistically more long-term addicting than opiates.

I say legalize it all, everywhere, because prohibition doesn't work. I can take $20, walk out the front door, and get literally any type of illegal drug there is, despite the trillions that have been spent across the world. Legalize and minimize; there's less collateral damage that way.