Pubdate: Wed, 21 Sep 2005
Source: Moscow Times, The (Russia)
Copyright: 2005 The Moscow Times
Contact:  http://www.moscowtimes.ru/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/903
Author: Oksana Yablokova
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

DRUG ENFORCERS SHARPLY CRITICIZED

The Federal Drug Control Service is opaque and prone to corruption, 
while its rank-and-file staff lack any clear-cut mission and often 
commit abuses, according to a scathing independent study of the 
two-year-old agency released Tuesday.

The report, written under the auspices of the Moscow Helsinki Group, 
a human rights organization, and Indem, an anti-corruption think 
tank, is the latest blow to the Federal Drug Control Service, which 
President Vladimir Putin created to tackle the country's drug 
problem. The agency has been repeatedly accused of ignoring the real 
problems behind drug abuse and instead chasing veterinarians and 
dacha poppy-growers to pad its arrest statistics.

That lack of focus on its core mission is a big problem, said Lev 
Levinson, a co-author of the report and the head of the New Drug 
Policy, an advocacy group for drug law reform.

"One of the main conclusions we arrived at is that the Federal Drug 
Control Service's focus is not on undermining the financial 
foundation of the illegal market, as the president instructed it to 
be, or on preventing drug use from spreading, rehabilitating drug 
users or coordinating all of these efforts," he said. "It is focusing 
on cracking down on so-called drug crimes."

The 76-page report, which is based on nine months of research in six 
regions, documents several raids that targeted apparently innocent 
young people suspected of using drugs. In one example, the report 
says the agency's Tula region branch dispatched two buses with SOBR 
special troops to raid several apartments and a cafe in the town of 
Bezhetsk on March 3. The masked and armed troops beat several young 
men, handcuffed them and illegally held them at the agency's office 
for almost 24 hours, it says. No charges were filed against the young men.

Report co-author Olga Fyodorova, of the Moscow Helsinki Group, said 
the drug control agency refused to comment on the raid or any of its 
other activities.

"All attempts to seek cooperation and clarification about certain 
incidents were brushed off by the agency's

personnel," she said. "Sometimes they said that the information was 
secret, but usually they said that they had no permission from above 
to cooperate."

Calls to drug control officials went unanswered Tuesday.

Shortly after the report was released, Interfax quoted agency 
spokesman Alexander Mikhailov as saying that "the report was a 
combination of scholastic ideas by people who have no idea about the 
goals and methods of the agency." He was quoted as saying that the 
public should ignore the report and that his agency might go to court 
over its release.

Late Tuesday, however, Interfax said it was withdrawing its article 
at the request of the drug control agency. It did not elaborate.

The Federal Drug Control Service has courted controversy since its 
creation in 2003, most notably for aggressively seeking out 
veterinarians who use ketamine, an anesthetic commonly used in pet 
operations that was included on a list of illegal substances. It also 
has cracked down on dacha owners with poppy plants growing on their property.

The agency has an army of 40,000 personnel, culled mostly from the 
disbanded tax police. The agency's critics have suggested that the 
agency was created to find jobs for the tax police officers rather 
than to fight the drug trade.

Fyodorova said the law did not spell out the status of a drug control 
officer -- unlike a regular police officer -- and that that opened 
the door for numerous human rights violations.

"The legislation regulating the work of the agency has many loopholes 
. and does not spell out measures for internal control and 
responsibility," Indem researcher Vladimir Rymsky wrote in the report.

The report is based on nine months of research, ending in July, in 
the regions of Nizhegorodsk, Tula, Marii-El, Tatarstan, Chita and Kaliningrad.

Its release came just a week after the Cabinet approved a $127 
million program to fight illegal drugs over the next four years. The 
bulk of the money was earmarked for the Federal Drug Control Service.

While the report was being presented Tuesday, Federal Drug Control 
Service chief Viktor Cherkesov was attending a Moscow presentation of 
a new United Nations report on the drug situation in Afghanistan, 
which is blamed as the source of much of the world's illegal drugs.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Drug Control Agency, told 
reporters that the UN had recorded the first notable decline in opium 
cultivation in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban but that 
drug production remained high due to favorable weather, The 
Associated Press reported.

Cherkesov said his agency recorded a sharp increase in the amount of 
illegal drugs coming into Russia from Afghanistan over the summer.

He also said the flow of Afghan heroin had seriously aggravated the 
HIV/AIDS problem in Russia and Ukraine, where drugs are usually injected.

According to the Federal Drug Control Service, 493,600 drug addicts 
were registered as of 2004. The actual number of drug users is 
thought to be at least eight to 10 times higher.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman