By Vestnik Kavkaza
The role of drugs in the Ukrainian events has begun to be discussed, after participants of the Euromaidan in Kiev began to behave aggressively. There were rumors that there are many drug addicts among supporters of European integration; and that they are provided with drugs to maintain an aggressive and crazy mood. One of the activists of the nationalist party Right Sector, Borislav Bereza, accused the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs of using heavy drugs after the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that Right Sector would come to the Southeast of Ukraine sooner or later.
Such a statement should be considered as an instrument of political PR or an attempt to demonstrate an original sense of humor. However, the problem of drugs is becoming urgent today. Nikolai Yevgrashenkov, advisor to the FDCS Directorate, refers to the UN information and says that “about 5% of adults in the world use drugs, these are about 230 million people. And 27 million people are troublesome persons, i.e. seriously addicted, these are 0.6% of the Earth's population.”
The drug business means organized crime, which is one of the leaders of criminal activity in the world. “Sometimes criminal activity defines the situation in some states, I mean the political and economic situation. Today the distribution of huge amounts of heroin and cocaine by criminal organizations originates from two regions of mass production, which are controlled by drug mafias – heroin from Afghanistan and cocaine from South America. If we look at the routes of distribution, we will see that extremist terrorist activity in transit states is spread through the same routes. During Operation Enduring Freedom, the poppy cultivated area grew in Afghanistan to its historic maximum, i.e. 26-fold. These facts provide reasons to believe that drug crime is not simply an antisocial phenomenon, but a factor which creates a threat to the national security of separate states and international security in general,” Yevgrashenkov says.
The drug economy develops successfully in deprived regions where there are no official state authorities and stability and the population suffer poverty. “For example, Afghanistan is the world leader among consumers of opium drugs. It actually has turned into a drug state economically,” Yevgrashenkov thinks.
The FDCS suggests elimination of organized criminal groups all over the world and prevention of legalization of any kinds of drugs. And finally it includes preventing using drugs and decriminalizing the youth environment.
