Heroin Addiction Spreads like Wildfire in Russia

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The young man named Anton is a member of Russia’s “lost generation.”

He’s the son of middle-class, college-educated engineers; he studied at a good university and became a truck sales manager in Moscow. He’s also a 28-year-old heroin addict.

In the years since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan triggered a sharp increase in poppy cultivation, Russia has been flooded with heroin. The drug has crept along a trail stretching from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations and over the Russian border, turning this country into the world’s top consumer of heroin, the government says.

The drug has spread like fire through a country uniquely unqualified to cope with its dangers: Narcotics were largely absent during Soviet times, and most people are still unaware of the risk of heroin addiction, even as an estimated 83 Russians a day die by overdosing on the drug, government figures show.

Heroin Nation

The BBC reports:

Russia says it has become the world’s biggest consumer of heroin.

The head of Russia’s anti-narcotics service, Victor Ivanov, said that seizures of Afghan heroin were up 70%. Speaking ahead of a meeting in Vienna of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, he called on the UN to do more to fight the problem. Mr Ivanov, a former KGB officer and senior Kremlin official, said the flood of the drug from Afghanistan posed a threat to Russia’s national security. He painted a grim picture, says the BBC’s James Rodgers in Moscow. He said the drug was partly to blame for rising crime and a fall in Russia’s population. Afghanistan is thought to be the source of 93% of the world’s heroin