Drug abuse: Tendencies and ways to overcome it

labor has been meted out without a term of imprisonment, or whose sentences

have been suspended or deferred;

treatment of drug addicts at corrective labor institutions

simultaneously with serving a term, supervision over inmates' treatment and

behavior.

Organizational Law Enforcement Measures against Drug-related Crimes:

Other organizational law enforcement measures against narcotics-related

crimes are: locating the illegal plantations of narcotic-bearing crops and

identifying their growers, eradicating such plantations, securing

prohibitions to grow narcotic substance containing crops, making special

maps upon the inspections of gardens, private plots of land and wastelands,

cooperating with agriculture experts, army units and other departments

concerned, carrying out special task operations and disseminating

information on drugs.

It is of paramount importance to reorganize the system of guarding

government-controlled plantations of hemp and the like crops or create such

a system in the places where it is absent. This measure is closely linked

to the development of advanced methods of crop guarding, especially, in

harvesting seasons. Work by shifts and material incentives may prove

effective. Good results can also be obtained through the improvement of

technical and chemical means of protection.

To limit the access of the public at large to the areas of government-

sponsored drug- bearing crop plantations, it would stand to reason to

establish special passport and traffic control in such areas.

Organization of Measures to Suppress Drug-dealing:

The measures to suppress drug dealing are the most important issue at

present. Manufacture and trade in narcotics has become a branch of the

shadow economy. It is gaining momentum, creating production facilities and

channels of distribution. In a large number of cases the understaffed law

enforcement departments are unable to rebuff the onslaught of drug

manufacturers and offer sound alternatives to all aspects of drug abuse.

The illegal production of drugs that spill over the state borders and

continents is at the top of the world community's agenda. Particular

significance is attached to the clandestine drug laboratories.

In the wake of it, it is exigent to set up specialized police

departments, which will concentrate the officers of high professional

expertise, and to provide them with the necessary material and technical

support.

Foreign experts believe tangible results in eradicating clandestine

laboratories can be achieved if police operations to uncover the channels

by which the raw materials arrive and the end product is dispatched are

synchronized with the efforts to block access to chemical substances and

equipment the manufacture of drugs requires. This, however, is not easy as

some drug synthesis components such as acetic anhydride, ether, benzene,

acetone are extensively used in the industrial sector. Their industrial

consumption is not controlled in practical terms since, in most countries,

legislation does not regulate the production, storage and use of these

chemicals.

Experts in Germany propose in this connection that the laws against

drugs should extend to cover these chemicals too. But the output and

industrial use of the above substances is so massive that the attempts to

take them under control within the boundaries of a single country have

yielded no results while entailing substantial expenditure on organizing

the control service.

Another measure suggested is marking the packing of chemical substances

with special marks that would help the police identify the country of

origin and the manufacturer. Such a step, however, is unproductive as in

most cases the police does not get a hold of packing of the chemicals which

had already been used.

Experts consider as more promising the special laboratory tests of the

confiscated narcotic substances and chemicals used in the manufacture of

drugs. The tests can be more helpful in identifying the country of origin,

elucidating specific features of the technological process and other

fundamental properties of the chemicals.

For instance, specialists of the German institute of criminology have

designed on the basis of the American and Swedish experience methods of

identifying the places of origin of heroin through chromatographic testing.

Experts believe the most effective way to control the proliferation of

the substances used in drug manufacturing could be the marking of such

substances with dyes or radiation. The weak point of the method is a

possible impact the marking may have on the qualities of the chemicals and

the end products. Besides, it would contradict the legislation of many

countries and some international agreements. That is why the researchers of

anti-narcotic methods tend to pin hopes on the method of a different nature

- self-control. It encompasses a set of police-proposed measures that are

effectuated by the services directly involved in actions against illegal

manufacturing, trafficking and trade in drugs, as well as by all companies

and individuals who have a connection with the manufacturing, sales and use

of narcotics and auxiliary chemicals. According to this concept, the

producers, suppliers and consumers of chemicals report to the police all

suspicious purchases. The police, in its turn, work out detailed

recommendation and criteria for such cases. Examples of these criteria are

above-the- statistic-average size of a purchased batch of chemicals, a

request from a new client, etc. Such kind of reporting gives the police

more opportunities to locate illegal laboratories, channels of raw

materials supplies and dispatch of the end product.

An imperative condition for putting in effect practical anti-narcotics

measures is stringent control over the narcotic raw materials and their

storage and limitations on trade in them.

It is important to note those drug-dealing affects the legitimate

turnover of narcotic substances. Violations of the rules of their storage,

manufacturing, and accounting continue increasing. There are

misappropriations and other offenses, including attacks on warehouses of

narcotic preparations in health centers, drug stores, etc. Executives do

not take adequate measures to safeguard narcotic substances and sometime

become accomplices in crimes. A possible explanation for this state of

affairs is the breach of the rules outlined above.

It is important to reveal violations of the effective rules of

manufacturing, storage, accounting, and sales of narcotic preparations,

invoking criminal liability when necessary. This necessitates joint steps

by the anti-drug units, licensing system of the internal affairs ministry,

fire detachments and units of extra-departmental guards.

The perpetrators of drug-related crimes' utmost secrecy calls for the

improvement in the procedures of investigation in strict compliance with

the criminal law procedures.

Crime Investigation Organizational Measures:

An important element in this process is the interaction between

detectives and investigators. The best and well-tested form of this

interaction is the setting-up of temporary or, as need be, permanently

functioning inquiry/investigation groups. These groups focus the efforts of

all branches of the police on drug-related crimes. The main directions of

activities (with due regard to the limits of professional competence of

each member of the group) are:

a) gathering and systematic analysis of all the incoming and requested

information on drug-related crimes and malefactors;

b) identification of criminal groupings and measures toward halting

their activities;

c) police actions to prevent and halt misappropriations of drugs and

other offenses in medicare institutions and other organizations;

d) police actions taken simultaneously with the investigation as

envisaged by the criminal law court procedure;

e) quality emergency investigation, completeness, objectivity and

timeliness of inquiry and investigation;

f) tactical planning and expedient conduct of search and technical

operations; professional conduct of operations; employment of investigation

and other technologies to supply the investigators with testimonies and eye-

witness accounts of the offenders' guilt;

g) professional analysis of the ways of using the results of search and

technical operations in investigation procedures.

Par. 4. Other Organizational Measures to Combat Narcotics

Narcotics can be overcome only if approaches to anti-narcotics activity

are fundamentally revised, its concrete trends are mapped out and the

control over the end results achieved by each ministry and department,

responsible for curbing this social evil.

Up-to-date scales and forms of narcotics proliferation show that the

measures, applied within the framework of established structures, are not

particularly successful. There is no proper interaction between the

ministries and the departments, called upon to handle these matters; work

is carried out far too often formally without essential drive, consistence,

and organization; the system of preventive, therapeutic, and rehabilitative

help remains inadequate; and anti-narcotic campaign is ineffective.

For this reason, organizational medical and law enforcement steps can

and must be backed by measures to resist drug abuse in all spheres and at

all levels of state power to avoid their imbalance and flaws in the all-out

anti-narcotics crusade.

The practical experience of daily anti-narcotics activity calls for a

significant impact from the top government agencies.

It is at this level that measures should be adopted for creating and

implementing a single national strategy against narcotics. For this end, a

single permanent executive body, empowered to control narcotics and capable

of coordinating comprehensive actions daily against drug addiction and drug-

related crimes must be created. The formation of such a body, representing

all the ministries and departments concerned, will make it possible to

organize a prompt and permanent government action against narcotics,

coordinate efforts of government agencies, and other organizations, as well

as individuals, and maintain contact with international organizations.

Lawmaking measures:

It is important to revitalize government-sponsored efforts toward

hammering out a single anti-narcotics legislation, matching international

standards, including 1) a law on the `control over the legal distribution

of narcotics, strong substances, precursors, and 2) on the responsibility

for such offences as: drugs extortion; illegal actions with government-

owned chemicals and special equipment and their use to make drugs; 3)

organizational forms of perpetrating drug-related crimes; 4) various

commercial and financial operations on money laundering.

Due to the latter, it is necessary to give law enforcement agencies

more authority to get from banks and other institutions and organizations

necessary data on accounts and other financial transactions of persons,

suspected of unlawful actions with narcotics.

Besides, it appears reasonable to amend the current legislation by

expanding authority and creating appropriate conditions for law-enforcement

agencies (police) to a) conduct searches of luggage, including carry-on

luggage, of passengers at all kinds of transport facilities, b) check

controlled shipments and cargoes, c) check state purchases of drugs, d)

conduct medical examinations of citizens, e) set a more flexible procedure

of placing drug addicts for medical treatment, f) a more flexible system of

administrative detaining and arresting of citizens, and g) to practice more

extensively the protocol form of pre-trial materials preparation.

Organizational Measures at Government Level:

It would be expedient to carry out a number of organizational anti-

narcotics measures at government level. They include:

- creating a stable system of information for regional law-enforcement

agencies about treaties, agreements, and protocols, concluded and signed by

countries, governments, and departments, about procedures and requirements

of signing such documents, about Interpol National Central Bank's

opportunities to combat specific types of crimes, and about requests'

formulation requirements;

- putting the NCB on round-the-clock duty to meet local requests;

- speeding up the creation of effective border customs control and

adopting measures against the use of a country as a transit point to ship

drugs to other regions;

- toughening control over the production and supplies of drug-bearing

substances in chemical pharmacology and other areas, where they are used

for lawful purposes.

A positive solution should be found to the issue of opening more

medical centers, improving anti-drug addiction therapy, and manufacturing

and acquiring more effective medicines, which involves much government

spending and a search for sources of funding. Simultaneously, special

government-financed short and long term comprehensive medical programs

should be worked out and put into effect to block the consumption and sale

of drugs; really re-socialize drug addicts; stop AIDS from spreading; spare

no effort toward revitalizing non-governmental organizations' activity,

aimed at reducing the demand for narcotics.

Measures to Train Personnel:

One should bear in mind that in most cases, the first contact with drug

addicts, that is with seriously ill people, is made by the officers of law

enforcement (police) agencies who have neither practical nor psychological

skills of dealing with ill persons. But even a physician is required

alongside professional knowledge, to display ethical norms, which quite

often are crucial for the recovery of mentally imbalanced patients. For

this reason, it is especially urgent and important to draw up teaching

aides and methodological recommendations for law- enforcement agencies, not

only on the tactics but also on the ethics of dealing with drug addicts,

especially young ones. It is necessary to put the experience, gained by the

police in anti-drug addiction prophylactic actions, into practice as soon

as possible.

Polish scientists identify three groups of young drug addicts: 1) those

who can but do not want to stop using drugs; 2) those who would like to

give up drugs but cannot do so on their own; 3) and those who do not want

and can not drop the ruinous dependence.

The principles of treating representatives of each of these groups

differ considerably. The experience of drug addicts' treatment shows that

two opposite trends dominate in the systems accepted up to date. The first

prefers tolerance, partnership, and medical treatment, excluding coercion

and punishment. The second envisages tough regimentation toward drug

addicts. However, there is one requirement that is common for both systems

- indispensable compliance with the principle of voluntary consent.

There are several varieties of pedagogics as industrial, military,

agricultural, and medical. The latter, also called orthopedagogics, deals

with upbringing children with defects. In the field of criminological

prophylaxis, essential is the role of resocialization, i.e. of the

educational effect on persons, poorly adapted to life in society. According

to the criminological literature, "the basic goal in penitentiaries, is to

create conditions for the social adaptation of persons after their prison

term is over.» All these sources of knowledge should be made instrumental

in combating drug abuse.

At the government level, interdepartmental programs involving a wide

range of experts and the media should be worked out and implemented on

educational and prophylactic campaign among the population.

Foreign Experience in Prophylactics:

Foreign experience deserves attention in this respect. Poland, for one,

attaches great significance to public anti-drug addiction campaigns.

Specialists are convinced that drug abuse should be addressed by the public

organizations and individuals, among them - well known scientists, artists,

writers, and clerics.

The catholic church plays a special role. Maximilian Conbeg's Society

has all parishes offered to its program of temperance, urging them to

abstain not only from drugs but also from all unnatural desires. The

program has been backed across the board. Each diocese has priests

specially trained to render professional aid to drug addicts and to help

them return to society.

The Catholic University offers a course of lectures, which are to help

drug addicts; the newly organized Drug Prevention Society has basic

activities coinciding with that of the government and its main tasks are to

treat drug addicts, return them to society and prevent drug-related crimes.

The Society provides therapy for drug afflicted persons, and

recommendations on how to regain the healthy way of life. The Polish

Psychiatrists' Society has an anti-drug addiction commission, pursuing

mainly scientific objectives.

The Monar youth movement immensely contributes to the anti-drug

campaign sparing no effort to return drug addicts to society by interacting

with medics. Religious and public organizations are actively involved in

anti-narcotics campaigns in other countries, too.

At the same time, it is only within the framework of a government-

sponsored program that all issues, pertaining to the destruction of drug-

bearing crops, must be addressed. For that it is necessary to create

independent agencies, furnished with advanced equipment, aircraft, motor

vehicles and other means. Such agencies can be allowed appropriate

functions only after clearance by a team of ecological experts. Here in,

strict criminal responsibility must be enforced for carrying out such

actions that destroy the environment and harm flora and fauna. There must

be compensation.

The solution of this issue depends upon the possibility of deploying

the armed forces. In the USA the army plays a key role in monitoring drug

trafficking routes. The Defense Department carries out the following

measures against criminal narco-business:

- searching for drug-bearing crops, secret laboratories, storages and

drug distribution points;

- discovering and destroying sources of producing drugs (cocaine,

marijuana, etc);

- putting under control all possible routes of smuggling drugs into the

country (by sea, by air, across land border);

- assisting state law-enforcement agencies in exposing the channels of

drug proliferation by using intelligence sensors and photo equipment in

border territories;

- coordinating operations to intercept ships and aircraft, suspected of

illegal drugs shipment;

- patrolling the coast by interceptor planes, ships, posting radars,

balloon systems to monitor low-flying objects, etc.;

- measures to get enlisted and non-enlisted army personnel cut drugs

consumption.

In 1990, the military, using search equipment, capable of locating

submerged cables and pipelines, discovered an underground tunnel at the

border with Mexico, a tunnel through which huge consignments of drugs were

smuggled into the USA. In the last few years, four anti-narcotics

techniques have been in focus: computerized systems, advanced means of

communication, field laboratory analyzers, remote chemical detectors (photo-

acoustic and laser spectroscopes for locating specific drug production

sites.) Experts regard as promising instruments for checking baggage and

cargo containers. These instruments operate on nonlinear radar principles.

Organization of Comprehensive Studies:

By combining the efforts of scientists and experts it would be possible

to avoid haste with setting up new creative teams and, instead, apply to

the database for information, learn its source and its author, and decide

whether it's simpler to use it rather than carry out studies anew. Such an

approach would be quite beneficial for those whose work has so far been

wasted and for those who urgently need scientific information.

This would also speed up the process of solving a number of drug

problems by cutting the time for scientific research and decreasing

inevitable material costs.

Functions of the Head Branch of the Anti-narcotics Agency:

Changes in the given situation call for an appropriate effective

response, a revision of the content and volume of work, correction of

functions carried out at the departmental level.

Particularly responsible is the role of the head branch of the agency

integrated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs which studies, analyzes,

sums up and monitors information on narcotics in the country, informs

appropriate institutions and departments about it, sets priorities in

actions against narcotics, adopts measures to attain them, and carries out

other managerial functions. This agency also arranges and takes part in

concrete anti-narcotics campaigns. These include measures to prevent the

illegal growth of drug-bearing crops (plan, organize, and carry out POPPY

operations, etc.); to curb theft of drugs and highly effective medicinal

substances; discover underground laboratories (develop, plan and carry out

Doping operations); uncover the most sophisticated crimes (by taking direct

part in investigative and search actions upon arrival on site, providing

methodological, informational and technical aid); expose persons and

criminal gangs with inter-regional and international narco-business links;

join other services in carrying out preventive operations at airports,

railway stations, customs offices to detain criminals, check the baggage,

eliminate drug trafficking channels; upgrade work toward preventing and

exposing drug-related crimes.

The volume of applicable law measures at this level bears a selective

nature, being many inferiors to the volume of managerial and other

functions. It would be more rational and effective however to rid these

branches completely of any forms of direct involvement in preventing,

exposing, and curbing crimes and thereby extend managerial functions by

raising demands for professional leadership and service management by

augmenting the staff functions of these branches and limiting their role in

exposing and curbing crimes to appropriate qualified essential methods and

effective control.

Perfecting Internal Affairs Ministry Work:

To make law-enforcement agencies anti-drug trafficking activity more

efficient, the Internal Affairs Ministry could:

- draft comprehensive anti-drug addiction programs;

- perfect the departmental normative basis, create methods and analysis

teaching aids and video-films;

- participate in the work to bring republican anti-narcotics

legislation in line with the international acts;

- create a normative-legal basis to ensure a mechanism for bilateral

and multilateral international cooperation;

- work out, create, and introduce in day-to-day activity a mechanism of

control over the emerging narcotic situation and coordinate reaction to its

changes;

- adopt measures to provide the branches with appropriate equipment and

special devices;

- create automated information-search systems with wide-ranging

possibilities to combat criminal narco-business;

- set out short and long term guidelines;

- determine resources for the target-oriented organizational,

informative, promptly investigative and material-technical support of areas

with widespread drug abuse and rampant crime;

- control the formation of local branches and their activities;

- organize interaction between law-enforcement (police) agencies,

serving at areas where drugs are grown, trafficked, and consumed;

- coordinate various branches' activity to carry out joint measures

toward exposing criminal gangs with inter-regional contacts and carrying

out prophylactic measures on air, sea, river, and auto transport;

- form computer data banks on drug trafficking at republican and

international levels;

- follow the USA and other countries' experience in setting up special

mobile units, armed with the most advanced military hardware and teach

methods and ecologically safe technologies of drug crops' destruction;

- promote law-enforcement (police) agencies' cooperation with customs,

national security agencies, army and border troops;

- educate territorial agencies on various methods of work;

- plan cooperation with foreign agencies in preventing drugs and raw

material for narcotics from being smuggled in from other regions practicing

a specific form of controllable supplies envisaged by the 1988 UN

Convention and exert control over such cooperation;

- organize and control scientific research and apply it;

- to study, sum up, and apply positive foreign experience;

One should bear in mind that the campaign against narcotics is part of

the universal action against organized crime. Efficiency at the local level

makes it possible to expose not only drug-related crimes but also felonies,

especially those involving violence and theft.

If all these organizational measures are put into practice, the

campaign against narcotics in the Russian Federation will be more

effective.

Conclusion

The international community sees narcotics as one of the most dangerous

social evils. International legal acts, as well as national legislations,

including that of the Russian Federation, contain numerous norms regulating

actions against narcotics bound to suppress and prevent it. Moves are made

to perfect and update these norms so that they could counteract new forms

and methods of committing drug-related crimes. Naturally enough, legal

regulations trail after criminal thought in these and other criminal

offenses.

To narrow the gap between the rapid advancement of criminal know-how

and the introduction of the new anti-crime legislation there is a need to

monitor the spread of narcotics, assess it, watch its dynamics, forecast

its progress and carry out appropriate research. Monitoring and research

are to help pinpoint the sensitive spots of drug abuse and work out new

legal norms and methods for dealing with them.

Highly important are the application of legal norms and the planning of

various measures aiming to oppose narcotics.

Private business has been made legal in the new social and economic

conditions. Under the guise of legally established private enterprises

underground drug manufacturing laboratories and drug trade hideouts

(houses, apartments) have begun functioning as unofficial operational

reports confirm. Illegal efforts to produce and sell drugs and the tendency

for their proliferation demand emergency antidrug legislation. Illegally-

operating drug-producing and drug-selling companies present a much bigger

threat to society than all other drug-related ventures do, now that they

(a) spread new varieties of and increasingly more hazardous drugs, (b)

increase, drug production and sales manifold, (c) promote an organized

system of narcobusiness and, consequently, the takeover of drug-trafficking

by organized criminal groups, (d) take monopoly control of drug-trafficking

and reap super-profits in this field, (e) take drug-trafficking operations

beyond the national borders and make use of their foreign connections for

the acquisition, manufacture, transportation, sending, smuggling and sale

of drugs. Their activities prompt many related crimes.

All this calls for moves to update the Russian Criminal Code with

articles on legal responsibility for the production and sale of drugs which

must be considered to belong to the categories of serious and most serious

criminal offenses punishable by ten to fifteen years of imprisonment and

the confiscation of property.

The climatic conditions on the territory of Russian Federation favor

the natural growth and cultivation of drug-bearing plants, which may be, or

are already, used for the purpose of drug production. This calls for the

need to constantly perfect methods of exposing and destroying such plants,

both those that are wild and those that are raised, which, in turn, calls

for a wide range of financial and organizational efforts.

Its geographic and geopolitical position makes the Russian Federation a

convenient trans-shipment point on the road from Asia to other former

Soviet republics and on to Europe. The Russian government, its law-

enforcement agencies, in particular, must, as a result, check illegal

attempts to take drugs across the national border, bolster up its customs

services and see to it that they upgrade their performance and work in

close cooperation with the territorial and traffic police and other

agencies expected to carry out programs of action against narcotics.

The newly gained independence requires that the Russian Federation

confront two problems directly related to narcotics and efforts to overcome

it.

First of all, borders between Russia and other former Soviet republics

show the highest degree of transparency, i.e. border-crossing presents

almost no problem. Given the geographic and geopolitical position of

Russia, the transparency of the national border aggravates the problem of

drug smuggling and calls for the need to essentially fortify the border and

better customs control along it.

Secondly, there is the problem of international relations in the field

of narcotics and international efforts to deal with it. There are two

angles to this second problem. Now that it has gained sovereignty, Russia

has to assume upon itself the functions of establishing and maintaining

international relations, especially since it represents a sort of a link in

the chain that ties drug- producers and drug-consuming regions together.

The second angle of this problem lies in the fact that once being a

part of the Soviet Union, Russian Federation neither faced nor could

possibly face obstacles concerning the jurisdiction of its anti-crime

effort, including crimes committed on territories of different Soviet

republics. Now that they are sovereign nations, the former Soviet republics

have national borders, which, transparent as they are, make legal action

against criminal elements possible only in the context of international

relations and in keeping with international agreements. This, naturally,

complicates the timely launching of operational and investigative actions

aimed at solving criminal cases including those of drug-trafficking.

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