MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/. Russian drug control chief Viktor Ivanov urged the Health Ministry to toughen the policy over circulation of psychotropic substances in Russia and to support an initiative which the Federal Service over Control for Drug Circulation had made to introduce a temporary ban on new chemical substances with psychoactive affect.

Speaking at a meeting of the state anti-drug committee on Monday, Ivanov gave as an example many countries in which procedures permitting to impose a week-long temporary ban on circulation of substances dangerous for people were fixed in legislation for up to three years until all further required procedures are completed. The Russian drug control agency calls for introducing a similar mechanism in the country, the agency’s head said.

“The Federal Service over Control for Drug Circulation has been seeking already for three years for Russia to also suspend the circulation of new substances which were found psychoactive in checked and legislatively fixed information,” he said. “However, several agencies and what is mostly deplorable, even the Health Ministry directly in charge of healthcare for our citizens, oppose this consistently despite international practice and common sense. I ask these agencies to revise their position urgently to protect the society and primarily young people.”

Around 300 new drugs are being designed in foreign countries every year and a new drug is generated each day, the Russian drug control agency said. In September, massive psychotropic substance poisoning cases were reported in several regions. Hundreds of people got poisoned. According to drug control reports, only the amount of confiscated designer drugs has skyrocketed by 130 times from 165 kilograms to 22 tons over the last seven years.

An epidemic of spreading smoking mixtures that got more than 700 poisoned in Russia has been stopped, Ivanov said on Monday. More than 25 of those poisoned died, he added. “First suspects were detained. Local groups spreading this poison were busted, channels for delivery of a new drug were sealed off in regions. A tense situation was curbed. A possible epidemic was suppressed this time,” Ivanov said.

The drug police confiscated over 50 kilograms of heroin in southern Moscow, the Federal Drug Control Service told TASS on Monday. The heroin’s origin is Afghanistan. The police detained a group of Tajik traffickers.

Several days earlier, Ivanov said up to 30 tons of high-concentration heroin is smuggled into Russia annually.  “The figure is frightful — almost 100,000 deaths every year,” he said. “The inflow of drugs is only growing,” he warned.