WASHINGTON, November 20 (Itar-Tass) — Russian and US heads of drug control services unanimously and resolutely turned down legalization of any narcotics.
Head of the Russian drug control service Viktor Ivanov emphasized this last Friday at a meeting with reporters in Washington, stressing that there is no and must not be such a perspective.
“The US leadership, my partner Gil Kerlikowske and I as a responsible head of the department for struggle against drugs, totally spurn down a possibility of legalizing the so-called light narcotics – such as marijuana,” Ivanov said.
According to his opinion, if their use is legalized, “the aftermaths would be disastrous”, -- both in medical sense, since their use leads to depression, schizophrenia and other psychic diseases as well as due to the fact that this could be “a powerful impetus to turn to other – hard toxic preparations”.
The meeting of a related working group at the Presidential Commission on cooperation, that was held in Chicago last week, paid much attention to questions of preventive measures and treatment of drug addicts. Incidentally, the conference hall of a local hospital was chosen as a place for holding this meeting.
Meeting participants also visited the rehabilitation centre Haymarket that treats annually up to 16,000 people who are alcohol or drug addicts.
Replying to a question on a possibility of using in Russia of methadone substitutive therapy, Ivanov appraised it very skeptically. He noted that methadone is, in actual fact, a synthetic narcotic, provoking addiction even more stable than heroine. Many drug addicts just turned to methadone in Ukraine which decided to introduce this method.
On the other hand, according to the Russian drug control head, Americans got interested in the results of clinical trials in Russia of “our national preparation – naloxone”.