SELIGER, Tver region, July 29 (Itar-Tass) - Drugs kill 100,000 young people (aged from 14 to 35) in Russia a year, Oleg Safonov, deputy director of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service, told activists of the Seliger 2013 All-Russia Youth Forum on Monday.
He said Russian law enforcers detained 52,000 Russian citizens for drug use in 2012. “Some 3 million people in Russia use drugs regularly, up to 6.5 people use them from time to time and some 18 million people tried drugs at least once,” Safonov said. He also noted that 90 percent of drug addicts in Russia are heroin-dependent.
Safonov said the Drug Control Service exerts huge efforts to check narcotics traffic from Central Asia, but police forces alone cannot cope with the problem. It is necessary to draw the public and youth in the effort, he stressed. Safonov called on the activists to send to territorial agencies of the Service information about the emergence of new formulae that can be used in drug making.
Viktor Ivanov, director of the Drug Control Service, had earlier acknowledged that punitive measures alone were not enough to cope with the problem. “Even if all drug abusers are in places of detention, this will not cure them,” he holds.