Pubdate: Fri, 09 Jun 2000
Source: St Petersburg Times (Russia)
Author: Anna Badkhen, Staff Writer

UPPER HOUSE PASSES MEDIA BAN OVER DRUGS

In an attempt to discourage drug abuse, the Federation Council this week 
approved a controversial amendment to the law on mass media forbidding all 
media, including the Internet, to disseminate information on the 
production, use and sale of illegal drugs.

The amendment, unanimously approved by parliament's upper house Wednesday, 
states that media outlets can not spread information about methods of 
"producing, preparing and using" drugs or about places where drugs are 
sold. Information about the medical advantages of illegal drugs via mass 
media is also prohibited.

The wording of the new amendment is almost identical to Article 46 of the 
law on drugs, which was adopted in April 1998. The law has drawn criticism 
for imposing tougher penalties for drug possession, forbidding private 
doctors from keeping illegal narcotics on their premises and banning 
treatment of drug addicts in private hospitals.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Sergei Polyatykin, medical programs 
director of the Moscow-based No to Alcoholism and Drug Abuse charity 
foundation, said he favored the amendment.

"Unfortunately, the print media and the Internet today are full of 
pseudo-anti-drug literature that describes in detail what kinds of drugs 
there are, where they are grown, what their effects are," Polyatykin said.

"At the very bottom, this literature mentions the dangers of drugs ... but 
such mentions don't discourage a teenager from trying a drug," he said. "A 
teenager does not understand the categories of life, death, health, 
illness. He is fearless and immortal. He is intrigued by the description of 
the drug and he wants to check it out."

But an official at the St. Petersburg Vozvrashcheniye Foundation - the 
first group to have launched a free needle exchange in Russia - said the 
amendment would be a step back in the fight against the country's growing 
drug problem.

According to the official, who declined to give her name, the ban on 
information about drugs would jeopardize the numerous nongovernmental 
anti-drug information programs that use mass media to inform people about 
the dangers of narcotics addiction.

"In order to fight a problem, one needs to know exactly what the problem 
is," the official said. "If there is no in-depth information about drugs in 
the media, the nation will be ignorant and, therefore, more vulnerable to 
drug abuse."

She said the vague terminology of the amendment might jeopardize the 
needle-exchange programs, whose success largely depends on the 
dissemination of information about them in the media.

Andrei Richter, a media expert, said the amendment was "useless" since "the 
existing criminal laws are sufficient to fight drug abuse."

He said he did not believe the amendment would be used to put pressure on 
the media.

Drug use and drug trafficking have increased dramatically since the 
collapse of the Soviet Union, when drugs became more readily available. The 
Health Ministry said last month that drug abusers account for about 90 
percent of the country's AIDS cases.

Earlier this year, Interior Ministry officials said they confiscated more 
than 60 tons of drugs in 1999, compared with 45 tons in 1998. They said 
more than 650 tons of materials used in making drugs were seized last year.
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