MOSCOW, September 30. /ITAR-TASS/. A brief advertisement painted on the asphalt sidewalk of a Moscow street read: “Wanna smoke?” Next to it was a phone number. A curious old woman stopped in surprise: “What are they selling there, cigarettes or what?” “Come on, granny! Don’t you know it’s the phone number of a pusher who trades ‘salt’!” was the reply from the old lady’s teenage grandson.
The sad truth is that despite his young age, that boy - like many of his age-mates in Moscow and across Russia - knows that this is a type of smoking blend mixed with a synthetic drug, a chemical equivalent of cannabinoids. In everyday use, it is also referred to as “spices” or “salts”.
A real spice epidemic hit three regions of Russia of late. The drug has killed a dozen victims and seriously harmed 300 others. Over the past three weeks, deaths from synthetic drugs have been registered in the Kirov region, Khanty-Mansi autonomous district and the Vladimir region.