PRESS RELEASE
Russians Take Aim at Drug Legalizers
June 13, 2011 (EIRNS)—The problem of heroin addiction in Russia is reaching apocalyptic proportions, with 6 million addicts out of a population of 141 million—which is nearly 1 in 25 inhabitants. The Speaker of the Russian Parliament Boris Gryzlov sounded the alarm on June 8: "We are standing on the edge of a precipice. Either we squash drug addiction or it will destroy us, because the problem threatens Russia's gene pool." He called for an all-out war on drugs.
Gryzlov had stressed in the past that opiate production in Afghanistan has grown more than 40-fold since the NATO invasion. Now Gryzlov, who is chairman of Prime Minister Putin's party, United Russia, proposes: "The barons of narco-business must be put on a par with serial killers with the appropriate punishment in the form of a life sentence."
Moreover, the outspoken chief of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov, blasted the report issued on June 2 by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, recommending that governments consider legalizing some drugs in order to curb global drug trafficking. Ivanov called that report "a propaganda campaign promoting the use of narcotics." Members of the Commission include George Shultz and Paul Volcker.
