Drugs Policy, Post Soviet, 2002

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ScienceAcademy of Political and SocialThe ANNALS of the American

DOI: 10.1177/000271620258200112

2002; 582; 167The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social ScienceLetizia Paoli

RussiaThe Price of Freedom: Illegal Drug Markets and Policies in Post-Soviet

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The Price of Freedom:

Illegal Drug Markets andPolicies in Post-Soviet Russia

By LETIZIA PAOLI

Letizia Paoli is a senior research fellow at the Department of Criminology of the MaxPlanck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany.She has published extensively on organized crime, drugs, and illegal markets. In the1990s, she served as consultant to the Italian Ministries of the Interiorand Justice, theUN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and the UN Crime and Justice In-terregional Research Institute.

ABSTRACT: In its difficult transition to democracy and a marketeconomy, Russia has experienced a veritable boom of illegal markets,specifically the drug market. Drawing on the results of a study con-ducted on behalf ofthe United Nations, the first part ofthe article re-constructs the expansion of illegal drug consumption and trade inRussia since the collapse ofthe Soviet Union. It points, in particular,to the rapid diffusion of heroin, a substance that was virtually un-known in the former Soviet Union. The second part ofthe article re-views the measures taken by the Russian government to tackle ille-

gal druguse and

trafficking.It concludes thatas much as in the

United Statesthe Russian drug policy is focused on supply reduc-tion, whereas more funds and energies should be invested on the de-mand side for drug prevention, treatment, and harm reduction.


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168

n NCEthe core of the Soviet Em-

pire, Russia has undergone adifficult transition to

democracyand

a market economy since 1991. Demo-

cratic political institutions were set

up shortly after the collapse of theSoviet Union, but the fullinstitutionalization of democracy isstill hampered by weakness of thecivil society and the limited auton-

omy of the media. The transition to a

market economy has been even more

difficult. In the 1990s, state enter-

prises were hastily privatized to for-mer Soviet high-ranking officialsfriends and cronies without previ-ously setting up an institutionalframework to ensure the proper func-

tioning of the market.As a result,during the first ten years of thetransition, a few robber barons

rapidly accumulated enormouswealth, while Russias GDP almosthalved and the living conditions ofthe mainstream population wors-ened dramatically.

While the legal market economyhas so far failed to fulfill its promises,the opening ofborders and the liber-alization of trade have triggered averitable boom of illegal markets. In

particular, since the collapse of theSoviet Union, a phenomenal expan-sion of illegal drug consumption andtrade has taken place in Russia, as inmost other countries of the former

Warsaw Pact. Illegal psychoactivesubstances were used even prior to1991, but during the Communist

regime, both the number of consum-ers and the range of available sub-stances were limited. Due to traveland trade restrictions, the formerSoviet Union neither constituted a

single drug market nor participated

significantly in international nar-cotic exchanges as a consumer or

supplierof illicit substances. How-

ever, this pattern of relative self-suf-

ficiency drastically changed duringthe 1990s, as Russia rapidly became

integrated in the international drugtrade. Large quantities of illegaldrugs today transit through the Rus-sian territory to reach final consum-ers in Western and Eastern Europe.The growing domestic demand is also

increasingly fed by more powerfuland easier-to-use drugs importedfrom abroad. Besides expanding andtremendously diversifying its supply,the Russian drug market has, duringthe past ten years, become trulynationwide, and it now reaches eventhe remotest Siberian cities.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union,the Russian state authorities have

responded in many ways to the

expansion of illegal drug trade. Sev-eral program initiatives have been

launched at both the domestic and

international level; draconian sen-

tencing provisions have been enactedto discourage drug dealing and traf-ficking. Despite these efforts, law

enforcement agencies have beenunable to prevent a near explosion inthe scale ofdrug markets, while drugusers and low-level dealers remainthe primary target of their punitiveaction.

Several measures, among which is

a new drug law, have also been

passed to tackle the rapid increase of

illegal drug use and abuse. Due tobudget constraints, however, most ofthe demand-reduction initiatives

foreseen by the new legislation haveremained on paper, while most harm-

reduction interventions are formally

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169

prohibited.As much as in the United

States, the Russian drug policy isfocused on

supply reduction,whereas-according to many Rus-sian and foreign observers-morefunds and energies should be

invested on the demand side for drugprevention, treatment, and harmreduction.

ILLEGAL DRUG USEAND

TRADE IN THE TWILIGHTOF THE SOVIET REGIME

In some parts ofSouthern and FarEastern Russia-and even more so,in the former Soviet CentralAsian

Republics-cannabis and poppiesgrow wild, and the use of these

plants derivatives has for centuries

been ingrainedin the

localculture

(Ministry of the Interior [MVD]2000). In European Russia, where nosuch traditional consumption pat-terns are diffused, illegal drug use

began to broaden in the late 1970s,most visibly among those noncon-formist youth who were influencedby the U.S. hippie counterculture andwho resorted to

drugsto define their

identity and to protest the con-straints of the Soviet society.A sec-ond wave of expansion was regis-tered in the late 1980s.Among the

myriad of informal (neformaly) youthgroups that developed &dquo;like mush-rooms after the rain&dquo; in the wake of

Gorbachevs perestroika, the regularor occasional use of illegal drugsbecame a frequent means of distinc-tion (Pilkington 1994).

Only in the mid-1980s did theSoviet authorities begin to admitthat their country-like the deca-dent capitalist societies-had a

problem of drug abuse.According to a1990 report of the Soviet MVD, the

numberof Soviet

citizens&dquo;who had

tried drugs or used them&dquo; totaledaround 1.5 million (Lee 1992,178). Inad hoc studies, academic scholars

reached even higher estimates. In aschool survey carried out in 1988-

1989 among 5,801 secondary schoolstudents, 597 respondents, or 10.2

percent, admitted to taking illegal

drugs. By extrapolation,the number

of drug users among fourteen- to sev-

enteen-year-old high school studentswas calculated at more than 1.5 mil-

lion, and the total number of Sovietcitizens who had taken drugs at leastonce in their lives was estimated at

more than 15 million (Gabiani 1990).Whatever the true number of drugusers in the Soviet Union, it is thusclear that the contemporary expan-sion of drug use has its roots in theSoviet era.

Up until the fall of the Soviet

Union, in Russia as much as in theother Soviet republics, the largestpart of the drug demand was sup-plied with locally produced sub-stances.

Accordingto a second

multiregional survey conducted byAnzor Gabiani in 1988-1989, amongalmost 3,000 regular and occasional

drug users, the three most frequentlyused drugs nationwide were canna-bis (whose derivatives, marijuanaand hashish, were the first drugs ofchoice for 55 percent of the respon-dents), poppy straw, and opium(which were both selected by about29 percent of the interviewees). Tra-

ditionally smoked, the latter two sub-stances were usually processed byyounger users into a strong solution

of opioid alkaloids and then injected.



5/15

170

Chosen by 18 percent of the respon-dents, codeine, a synthetic opiate,

was the fourth most popular drug(Gabiani 1990).Due to the strict border control,

imports represented a negligibleshare ofthe Soviet drug market, andeven the domestic trade was rather

limited because most people were notfree to move. It is not by chance thatthe spread of the two drugs that are

considered the most dangerous in theWestern world (i.e., heroin andcocaine) was very low. Neither of

them, in fact, was produced in theSoviet territory.As Rens Lee (1992)put it, up until the early 1990s, &dquo;the

country [was] virtually self-sufficientin narcotics&dquo; (p. 184). This assess-ment is confirmed by the data gath-ered

bythe

DrugEnforcement Divi-

sion of the Soviet MVD: accordingly,98 percent or more of the drugs con-sumed in the Soviet Union were of

domestic origin (Lee 1992, 184).&dquo;The Soviet narcotics market

[was] highly imperfect by capitaliststandards&dquo; (Lee 1992, 186).A devel-

oped drug distribution system hardly

existed,and

manyusers either

pro-duced or harvested their drugs them-selves. Only a minority ofconsumersbought illicit psychoactive sub-stances from a professional dealer(Gabiani 1990). Sophisticated pro-duction facilities for processing nar-cotics were relatively rare. Mostmanufactured drugs were home-made, usually prepared in theowners own kitchen. Far from beingmanaged by large-scale criminalorganizations, most transfers andsales of drugs were carried out byindividuals or small groups. It was

predominantly a kind of &dquo;ants

trafficking,&dquo; which only rarely over-came the regional boundaries.

As no nationwide distribution sys-tem existed, drug consumption var-ied significantly by region and was

largely dependent on the local avail-

ability of illegal psychoactive sub-stances. People in the NorthernEuropean parts of the Soviet Unionwere far more likely to consume syn-thetic opiates and amphetaminesthan

peoplein the Southern

regionsand the Far East, where plant-basedsubstances were readily available(Gabiani 1990). Due to the bottle-necks in the Soviet drug distributionsystem, in some parts of the country,anesthetics with hallucinogen effectsand toxic substances (such as glue,acetone, and gasoline) were also

widely resorted to for lack of betteralternatives (Paoli 2001b, 1-16).

THE DEMAND FOR

ILLEGAL DRUGSAFTER 19911

The disintegration of the SovietUnion and the difficult transition to

democracy and a market economyhave fostered the

expansionof

druguse and abuse in Russia since 1991.Even more than for their forerunners

in the 1970s and 1980s, for contem-

porary Russian urban youth, illegaldrugs have become a means to dem-onstrate their assimilation to West-ern lifestyles and to display theirnewly obtained freedom of action.

Drug use also reflects the lack oforientation suffered by many Rus-sian teenagers and young adults. In a

society that has abandoned its oldvalue system and has not yet estab-lished a new one, young people recog-nize neither their parents nor their



6/15

171

teachers as role models. They tend to

consider older peoples values, life-

styles, and experiences meaninglessand without any practical signifi-cance.As Igor Ilynsky (1995), the rec-tor of the Institute of Youth Studies

in Moscow, stated, the Russian soci-

ety is not merely experiencing theusual &dquo;generation conflict,&dquo; entailingdifferent opinions on dress, hairstyle,music, dance, and behavior. &dquo;Russian

society is actually facing ... a breakin generations reflecting a rupture of

continuity, a rupture in historical

development, a transition of societyto a principally different economic,social and political system&dquo; (p. 106).In such a phase of rupture, drugshave become an accessible means to

express youth opposition to older

generations models and ones will-

ingness to go ones own way, radicallydeparting from standard life paths.

For a small but rapidly growingminority ofRussian youth, moreover,drugs increasingly represent whatRobert Merton (1949) called the&dquo;retreatist adaptation&dquo;: that is, the

rejection of the dominant cultural

goals and institutional means.

Unable to reach the glamorous aimsof a society for which wealth is

becoming the primary and exclusivemeasure of peoples value, youngRussians increasingly resort to ille-

gal drugs to escape their harsh livingconditions, to forget their broken

dreams, and to cope with unemploy-ment and marginalization.

The Russian MVD estimates that2.5 to 3 million people in the RussianFederation regularly or occasionallyuse illegal drugs, which represents2.1 percent of the total population

(United Nations Office for Drug Con-

trol and Crime Prevention

[UNODCCP] 2001).In absolute val-

ues, this figure is not staggering. In1999 in the United States, for com-

parison, 14.8 millionAmericans (5.4

percent of the population) reportedusing an illicit drug at least once dur-

ing the thirty days prior to the inter-view (SubstanceAbuse and Mental

Health ServicesAdministration

2000). What makes Russias case so

astounding is the sudden growth in

drug use and, above all, drug abuse.The abrupt expansion of these phe-nomena is clearly shown in the data

regardingdrug users who were regis-tered for the first time in state drugtreatment centers. In 1991, 3.9 cases

per 100,000 inhabitants were

recorded yearly. In the followingyears, there has been a veritable

escalation, and in 1999, there were42 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.The Ministry of Health estimatesthat the number ofdrug users for thefirst time entering treatment wouldhave reached the rate of 48.5 per

100,000 people by the end ofthe year2000 (UNODCCP 2001, 8).

Though cannabis remains themost frequently used illegal drug inRussia as in most other countries,heroin consumption has rapidlyincreased. The latter substance

started to be available in Moscow and

other Russian cities in the mid-1990s

and rapidly became a substitute forthe less powerful homemade opiatesthat were previously injected by Rus-sian users. Today, heroin attracts not

only intravenous drug addicts, butalso teenagers from all social back-

grounds who initially smoke it,



7/15

172

althoughmany of them end up inject-ing it. Six percent of fifteen- to six-

teen-year-old highschool students

interviewed in Moscow in 1999

admitted to having used heroin atleast once in their lives. In none of the

twenty-one other countries involvedin the European Project of SchoolResearch inAlcohol and Drug Use

survey did the lifetime prevalencerate exceed 2 percent (Vishinsky1999).

While heroin became widespreadin Russia only in the late 1990s, the

high prevalence of heroin use amongRussian high school students pointsto a larger trend: the spread ofinject-ing drug use among teenagers and

young adults. In Western Europe,injecting drug use is commonly wide-

spread among low-class marginal-ized young and, increasingly, not so

young people. In Russia, on the other

hand, a straightforward associationas such cannot be made; rather druguse, including intravenous drug use,seems to involve youth from all socialclasses and ethnic groups (Paoli

2001b,17-20; Gilinsky, Kostjukovsky,and Rusakova 2000, 15).

In the late 1990s, injecting use ofheroin and other drugs was shown tobe an alarming means of spreadingHIV andAIDS. The World Health

Organization (Wines 1999) recentlyreported &dquo;an explosive increase inHIV infections&dquo; in Russia. In 2000,46,438 cases of HIV infections wereidentified. This is almost twice the

total of 29,000 infections recorded inthe country between 1987 and 1999.

However, even this massive riseunderstates the real growth of theepidemic. By Russian estimates, the

national registration system cap-tures just a fraction ofthe infections.

Accordingto conservative

forecasts,more than 1 million people could beinfected with HIV by the end of 2001(UNODCCP 2001, 9, 18).

THE RISE OFA NATIONWIDE

MARKET FOR ILLEGAL DRUGS

The Russian drug market tremen-

dously expanded its turnover in the1900s, as seizure data (though indi-rectly) prove. During the last decadeof the twentieth century, in fact, theamount ofillicit drugs confiscated bythe Russian MVD grew 3.5 times,from 16,260 kilograms in 1990 to

59,343 kilograms in 1999. Even more

spectacular has been the rise of her-oin seizures: this substance was

largely unknown until 1992, when

only 5 grams were intercepted in allof Russia. Since then, heroin seizureshave increased continuously, reach-

ing 984 kilograms in 2000(UNODCCP 2001).

The expansion ofthe Russian ille-

gal drug market has affected not onlyits turnover but also its geographicextent. Most illicit drugs are cur-

rently available in virtually all Rus-sian regions, and supplying oneselfwith various kinds of illicit drugs hasbecome easier in all Russian cities. In

St. Petersburg (Russias second larg-est city), according to a young con-

sumer, &dquo;youhave the impression thatyou can buy drugs everywhere&dquo;

(Gilinsky, Kostjukovsky, andRusakova 2000, 21). The growingdrug availability involves not onlythe metropolises but also the middleand smaller centers, where the



8/15

173

changes may possibly have been evenmore spectacular (see, e.g.,Markoryan 2000). To get their highor forget their sorrows, drug users allover Russia are no longer obliged to

rely on toxic substances, homemade

products, or derivatives of locallygrown plants. If they can afford it,users can easily purchase the sameillicit psychoactive drugs that can befound in any Western European or

NorthAmerican city, imported from

countries as far away as Colombia,Afghanistan, and Holland.Althoughcannabis has retained its pre-

dominance, there also has been ashift from plant extracts and home-made solutions to ready-to-usepreparations.

Heroin is imported-via the for-mer Soviet CentralAsianRepublics-fromAfghanistan, the source of two-thirds to three-quarters of the globalsupply of illicit opiates in recent

years. Former Soviet communication

routes are increasingly exploited, not

only to satisfy the growing domestic

demand, but also to smuggle heroininto Europe. Following the looseningofborder controls and the liberaliza-

tion oftrade, other illegal drugs, suchas cocaine and ecstasy, have also

become available in Russia. The for-

mer is imported either directly fromLatinAmerica or, more frequently,from Western European countries;the latter is predominantly smug-gled from Holland (Paoli 2001b, 74-90). Whereas ecstasy is becoming

popular among young people of allsocial strata, cocaine is still con-sumed-due to its prohibitiveprices-only by a tiny minority of&dquo;new Russians,&dquo; the sole ones whocan afford it (Paoli 2001b, 60-63).

THE &dquo;INVISIBLE HAND&dquo;

OF THE MARKET

The growth of Russian drugcon-

sumption and trade in the 1990sentailed the emergence of a nation-

wide drug distribution system, deliv-

ering illicit drugs from producers toconsumers thanks to the mediation

of full-time or part-time traffickersand dealers. The latter roles did not

exist in Russia prior to the early

1990s, comparableto the situation in

Western Europe and the UnitedStates up until the mid-1970s. It was

not until the drug supply diversifiedand Russia entered into interna-

tional drug trade that the drug dis-tributor, as a professional role,emerged to link producers to con-sumers and to regularly supply largeurban centers with a variety of illegaldrugs from distant regions.

In official reports, Russian law

enforcement authorities present a

very &dquo;organized&dquo; picture of the drugtrade. In its latest report on drug and

organized crime, for example, theMVD (2000) categorically stated that

&dquo;drug crime is always organized&dquo; (p.5). The idea that drug trafficking is

dominated by large, structured crim-inal groups finds, however, scarce

support even in law enforcement sta-tistical data. It is enough to say thatthe crimes committed by &dquo;organizedcrime groups&dquo; represent less than 1

percent of the total drug offencesreported in Russia during the 1990sand in 1999 accounted for only 4.1

percent of drug trafficking cases(Paoli 2001b, 91-93).No proof of large-scale trafficking

organizations emerges from the fifty-two drug-related criminal proceed-ings that were analyzed by the



9/15

174

author together with the ResearchInstitute of the Prosecutor Generals

Office (Paoli 2001a).Althoughthe

defendants frequently received dra-conian sentences because they were

suspected of belonging to an orga-nized group, the existence of such

groups remained largely unproved.In the Russian jurisprudence, in fact,a drug transaction between the

buyer and the seller or even the com-mon

purchaseof illegal

drugs bytwo

users are considered sufficient to

apply the organized crime groupaggravating circumstances.And this

assumption holds even when theother components of the groupremain unknown: in thirty-six of the

analyzed cases, there was only onedefendant. Likewise, althoughaggravating circumstances due tothe extremely large scale of the con-fiscated drugs were often applied, inmost cases, the amounts were mini-

mal, at least according to Westernstandards. Defendants were sen-

tenced to more than five years of

imprisonment, for buying and par-tially selling drug amounts rangingfrom 3.3 milliliters of vi nt/ 0.15 and0.17 grams of opium, and 0.091 and0.0058 grams of heroin.

The relatively &dquo;disorganized&dquo;(Reuter 1983) nature of drug traffick-

ing and distribution in Russia is fur-ther shown by the fieldwork con-ducted in nine Russian cities

(including Moscow, St. Petersburg,NizhniyNovgorod, Krasnoyarsk, and

Vladivostok) on behalf of theUNODCCP (Paoli 2001b). The UN-

sponsored project could indeed provethat a multilevel drug distributionsystem had developed in all of thesecities, which led to users

increasingly buying drugs from deal-ers instead of cultivating or harvest-

ingthem themselves. The consum-

ers demands, however, seem to beneither satisfied nor promoted by thelarge, hierarchically organized firmsthat monopolize local markets.

The phenomenal growth of druguse can thus be attributed to the in-

visible hand of the market: the local

drugmarkets of Russian cities are to-

daylargely supplied

bya

myriadof

drug dealers who tend to operatealone or in small groups and oftenconsume illegal drugs themselves. In

many cases, the dealers do not pos-sess previous criminal expertise anddeal with illegal drugs simply to earna living or to supplement the meagerincome they obtain from licit activi-ties.As a Moscow police officer put it,

There are no Colombian drug cartelshere. There are instead many small

groups that are made ofpeople belongingto the same nationality or ethnic group.There is not one single river, but manystreams that flow independently on oneanother. (Paoli 2001b, 102)

Although the members of someethnic communities (above all,Roma, Tajik,Afghani, andAzeri)may be overproportionally repre-sented in the drug distribution sys-tem of many Russian cities, illegaldrugs are also produced and sold bymany people belonging to the main-

stream Russian population who can-not be precisely classified.AsLudmila Markoryan (2000) fromBalakovo (a Southern Russian cityclose to the border with Kazakhstan)

pointed out,



10/15

175

It is not easy to refer the drug dealers ofour city to specific social groups. Dealer

might be a housewife, a jobless person, ora businessman. The age range of middleand high-ranking drug dealers also var-ies tremendously: there are young peopleas well as retirees.

COUNTERNARCOTIC OPERATIONS:

RHETORICAND PRACTICES

In its philosophy and goals, the

drug policy of the Russian Federationpresents a strong continuity withthat pursued by the former SovietUnion: not only do they aim at a drug-free world but they regard repressionand coercion as legitimate means tocurb both the consumption and thetraffic of illegal drugs. What has

changed during the past ten years is

the amount of human and materialresources that are invested in the

fight against illegal drugs. Previ-

ously ranked as a secondary task,since 1991, counternarcotic opera-tions have become one of the most

important and prestigious activitiesfor all Russian law enforcement

agencies. These have frequently

exploitedthe

fight against drugabuse and trade to justify their exis-tence as well as their growing fund-ing needs, and ever since the early1990s, reforms were passed to adjustto the new tasks. In 1991, the DrugControl Department was set upwithin the MVD, and in less than adecade, its staff more than tripled,exceeding five thousand units. In the

following years, similar entities wereset up within other law enforcement

agencies: in the State Customs Com-

mittee, the Federal Security Service(the former KGB), and the FederalBorder Guards (MVD 1999, 28-30).

As the cooperation among these bod-ies has not always been smooth and

effective, in May 1998, the Inter-agency Drug Control Center was

established, which is composed ofofficials ofthe above-mentioned bod-

ies and is attached to the MVD.

According to several interviewees,however, even the work of the Inter-

agency Drug Control Center is ham-

pered by persisting rivalries amongthe various law enforcement agen-cies and among departments of theMVD itself (Paoli 2001b, 128-34).

Since the fall of the Soviet Union,considerable efforts were made to

intensify Russias cooperation withinternational organizations and for-

eign countries on drug control mat-ters. Besides working more closelywith the

UNODCCP,in

May 1999,the Russian Federation became amember of the Council ofEurope Co-operation Group to Combat Drug

Abuse and the Illicit Trafficking in

Drugs (the so-called PompidouGroup). Bilateral and multilateral

cooperation has also increased rap-idly since the early 1990s.As ofNovember 1999, more than eightyintergovernmental and interagencyagreements with fifty-seven stateshad been concluded, which fully orpartially deal with drug control coop-eration. Working contracts were alsoestablished with a number of coun-

tries with which bilateral agree-ments had not been concluded (MVD

2000, 39-43).

On the basis of the above agree-ments, since the early 1990s, Russianlaw enforcement agencies carried outnumerous counternarcotic opera-tions together with their counter-parts in foreign countries. In the late



11/15

176

1990s, the former were involved inabout 150 international drug-con-

trolled deliveries (MVD 2000, 39-43).In particular, to hamper the herointrade, since 1993, the Russian Fed-eral Border Guards have been patrol-ling the border betweenAfghanistanand Tajikistan, seizing more thanthree thousand kilograms of heroinin 2000 (UNODCCP 2001, 17).Asidefrom Tajikistan, however, mistrustand

suspicionoften

pollute jointoperations with the law enforcement

agencies of former Soviet republics.Almost ironically, according to Rus-sian and foreign police officers alike,the counternarcotic cooperationseems to be the smoothest with the

Western countries, which were Rus-

sias main enemy up to a decade ago

(Paoli 2001b, 132-34).

Reflecting the larger resourcesinvested in counternarcotics opera-

tions, both the number of seizuresand the amounts of confiscated drugsincreased tremendously during the1990s. Even the number of reporteddrug offences grew spectacularlyfrom 16,255 in 1990 to 216,364 in1999. By analyzing the latter statis-tical data, however, it becomes clear

that-despite official rhetoric-drugusers are the main target of statecounternarcotic efforts. On average,in fact, between 1990 and 1999, morethan 77 percent of all registered drugoffences involved the mere posses-sion of very small drug quantitieswithout the purpose of sale (Paoli

2001b, 134-39).As a matter of fact, according to

the 1996 Russian Criminal Code, the

possession of narcotics &dquo;not on a largescale&dquo; is considered a mere adminis-

trative infraction and not a criminal

offence (Ciklauri-Lammich 2001).

Onlyif

drugusers are

caughtwith

large-scale amounts of drugs are

they prosecuted, pursuant to article

228, paragraph 1, for the &dquo;acquisitionand keeping without the purpose ofsale of narcotic drugs,&dquo; which is pun-ishable with imprisonment up tothree years. The amounts set by the

Standing Committee on Narcotic

Drug Control of the Russian Minis-

try of Health to establish the mean-

ing of &dquo;large scale&dquo; are, however, solow that most consumers, even if theyare found with minimal quantities of

drugs, exceed them.According to thetable published by the StandingCommittee in December 1998, in

fact, &dquo;not large scale&dquo; amounts areconsidered to be the following:

~ hashish: up to 0.1 gram~ dried marijuana: up to 0.1 gram~ not dried marijuana:up to 0.5 gram~ opium: up to 0.1 gram~ morphine: up to 0.1 gram. (Stand-

ing Committee on Narcotic DrugControl 1999)

To avoid the

explicitdecriminal-

ization ofthe acquisition and posses-sion of even very small amounts, the

commission set no figure for heavydrugs and specifically for heroin. In

agreement with the Supreme Courtand the prosecutors office, the Rus-sian MVD subsequently issued a rec-ommendation in which it stated that

a criminal case can be opened only ifa &dquo;portion&dquo; of illegal drugs capable ofproducing psychoactive effects on itsuser was seized (Paoli 2001b, 124).The notion of portion is, however,very conservatively interpreted, and



12/15

177

a few milligrams of heroin are usu-

ally enough to open a penal proceed-ingfor the acquisition and possessionof drugs on a large scale. In the Rus-sian jurisprudence, in fact, morethan 0.005 grams of heroin and more

than 0.0001 grams of LSD are usu-

ally considered large amounts

(Gilinsky, Kostjukovsky, andRusakova 2000, 32). Indeed, as theabove-mentioned analysis of drug-related crime proceedings demon-

strates, even the prosecution ofmoreserious offences overwhelmingly tar-

gets drug users. It is thus fair to con-clude that most of the persons who

are arrested and prosecuted yearly inRussia for drug offences are not deal-ers but users.

The only way to avoid falling intothe law enforcement net is to bribe

police officers: this is-according tomany drug users, dealers, and even

police officers themselves-by nomeans an infrequent practice.Throughout Russia, in fact, many pa-trol officers accept-and frequentlyeven extort-bribes from drug usersand dealers to supplement their

meager wages (a Russian police offi-cer earns

less than 100 dollarsa

month) or to cope with the sometimes

lengthy wage arrears (Paoli 2001b,64-67).As a drug user-dealer in St.Petersburg maintained,

If I have to describe all the occasions I

gave money to the police, it is going to be-come a lengthy volume. If I am arrestedwhen I have money or drugs, I always pay.If I have no money, I call my girlfriend orsome other friend by mobile phone tocome and help me. (Gilinsky,Kostjukovsky, and Rusakova 2000, 31-32)

THE NEGLECT OF DEMANDAND

HARM-REDUCTION STRATEGIES

The development of treatment andrehabilitation institutions consti-tutes one ofthe main priorities set bythe Federal Law on Narcotic Drugsand Psychotropic Substances, whichwas approved on 10 December 1997.

According to its article 54, in fact,&dquo;the state guarantees help to drugaddicts, including examination, con-

sulting, diagnostics, treatment,and

social-medical rehabilitation.&dquo; Most

of these services are supposed to befreely and exclusively provided bypublic hospitals and day care centersbecause the new legislation explicitlysets a state monopoly on treatment(article 55).

The state drug treatment centers,however, do not have the financial,material, and human resources tofulfill the tasks that are assignedthem by the law. Due to budget con-straints, a specific bill concerning the&dquo;social and medical help for drugaddicts,&dquo; which was to complete thefederal drug law, has never beenissued.As a result, even in publichealth institutions, most drug users

have to pay for services that shouldhave been obtained gratis. Moreover,for fear of being reported to the

police, many users do not willinglyturn to state drug treatment centersforhelp-with the paradoxical conse-

quence that these often operatebelow their restricted capacities.

The shortcomings of state drug

treatment centers are only partiallyoffset by the private ones. These for-mally operate contra legem but arepresent in virtually all Russian cit-

ies, and in some contexts they evenadvertise in newspapers (Paoli



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178

2001b, 139-41). Private centers are,above all, popular because they offer

the guaranteeof

anonymoustreat-

ment. They represent, however, a via-ble alternative only for those users

coming from rich families who canafford to pay up to U.S.$200 a day.

The new drug law also sets a statemonopoly on drug prevention activi-ties-but only a handful of the

eighty-nine subjects of the RussianFederation have so

farfound the

money to carry out large-scale drugprevention and information cam-

paigns.As in the case of treatment,the formal prohibition is often disre-

garded, and some of the gaps left byfederal and state bodies are filled byRussian and foreign nongovernmen-tal organizations. In several areas,these have launched harm-reduction

projects to inform users about therisks associated with drug use andteach them risk-reduction tech-

niques. Thanks to the financial sup-port of George Soross Open SocietyInstitute and the training and tech-nical assistance of M6decins sans

Fronti6res, for example, peer-drivenintervention and needle exchangeprograms were started in the late1990s in more than twenty Russian

cities. Though these programs havethe approval of the local city and

regional administrations, many oftheir coordinators report interfer-ence by the police and resent workingon the fringe of legality (Sergeyevet al. 1999; Burrows et al. 2000).

As harm-reduction measures are

one of the few effective means to

reduce the spread of HIV, many Rus-sian and foreign, public and privatedrug-treatment providers call for

their intensification and full legal-ization (Paoli 2001b, 141). These

observers also insist that demandand harm-reduction strategiesshould be granted at least the samerelevance and financial, human, and

material resources as are invested in

repression activities.At least in theshort term, however, there seems tobe no reason to expect a radical shiftin the Russian drug policy, as boththe

general publicand the law

enforcement agencies (including the

powerful MVD) support a tough and

uncompromising stance vis-A-visboth drug dealers and users. Only thecoming explosion of HIV infectionsmay perhaps legitimize harm-reduc-tion measures and trigger a para-digm change-as happened underanalogous circumstances in severalWestern European countries in thelate 1980s and early 1990s.

No matter what the drug policyemphasis will be, there is no doubtthat Russia will have to learn to copewith extensive illegal drug consump-tion and trade in the near future.As

in Central and Eastern Europe, thepost-Soviet transition to democracyand a market economy have giventhe Russian people an unprece-dented degree offreedom-includingthat ofbuying illegal drugs as long asthey can afford to. The excepted highprofits from the illegal drug tradeand the dire living conditions ofmostRussians ensure that the domestic

demand for illegal drugs will go on

beingmet-and, to some extent, evenfostered by importers and distribu-tors. Finally, due to its geographicalposition, Russia will certainly go onbeing crossed by heroin cargos on



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179

their way to the rich consumer mar-

kets in Western Europe, at least as

longas

Afghanistanremains one of

the largest world opium and heroin

producers. Even though many Rus-sian citizens are shocked to realize it,the recent expansion of the illegaldrug market constitutes a reliable-though worrying-indicator of thelong way they have gone since 1991.

Note

1. Vint is a methamphetamine solution

that can be produced domestically by the usersthemselves and that was very popular in Rus-sia in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

References

Burrows, D., F. Trautmann, M. Bijl, and Y.

Sarankov. 2000. Trainingin

the Rus-sian Federation on rapid assessmentand response to HIV/AIDS among in-

jecting drug users. Journal of Drug Is-sues (fall): 811-41.

Ciklauri-Lammich, E. 2001. Dasrussische Betubungsmittelrechtunter besonderer Bercksichtigungder strafrechtlichen Regelung.Jahrbuch fr Ostrecht 42:12-29.

Gabiani,A. A. 1990. Narkotismv

zerkalye sotsiologii (Narcotism in themirror of sociology). Unpublishedmanuscript.

Gilinsky, Y., Y. Kostjukovsky, and M.Rusakova. 2000. Site report on drugmarkets, drug trafficking, and orga-nized crime in St. Petersburg. Unpub-lished manuscript.

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predypresdenie prestypnosti vRossijskoj Federazii: Organisovan-naja prestypnosti nesakonnij oborotnarkotikov v Rossijskoj Federazii

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Pilkington, H. 1994. Russias youth andits culture.A nations constructors and

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bridge, MA: MIT Press.

Sergeyev, B., T. Oparina, T. P.Rumyantseva,V L. Volkanevskii, R. S.

Broadhead, D. D. Heckathorn, and H.Madray. 1999. HIV-prevention inYaroslavl, Russia:A peer-driven inter-vention and needle exchange. Journal

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nebolsim, krupnym i osobo krupnym



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Documents

Drugs Policy, Post Soviet, 2002