(BTW, the percentage of Russians who are drug addicts is only a few decimals higher than in the US.).
Chris Doss The Russia Journal ---------------------------- The Guardian (UK) August 7, 2002 Russia's rise in addicts leads to rampant HIV Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Drug abuse has grown dramatically in Russia over the past decade, prompting a massive rise in the spread of HIV, according to government figures.
A Russian interior ministry official said yesterday that the number of illegal drug users might now be between 3 and 4 million, 20 times the official 1992 figure.
Mikhail Melikhov, the deputy chief of the interior ministry department tackling the illegal drug trade, said the number of drug users registered with Russian medical institutions had risen more than 5% in a year, reaching 496,000, but added that the real figure could be "five to eight times higher".
The UN called the trend "very worrying". Taavi Erkkola, the programme officer for Russia at the United Nations' office for drug control and crime prevention (UNDCP), said: "We can confirm this seems to be the trend and the worst threat is the rise in HIV cases. There has been a dramatic rise this year, of 25,000 new cases up to July."
With the bureaucratic delays in reporting, the final figure for this year is expected to be much higher than last year's 87,000 new cases mainly caused by drug abuse. "In principle, availability is the cause: most of the users are young people between 15 and 29 years, who start aged 13 to 14."
A senior UNDCP source added that government figures did not distinguish between different drugs, but that heroin was predominant.
"In St Petersburg, heroin accounts for an estimated 75% of drug use," the source said.
Drug use has increased 2.6 times in five years among teenagers. The UNDCP source said that drug users were registered in Soviet times, and hence the huge rise in numbers could not only be explained by a change in accounting practices.
"This is mainly due to availability," said the UNDCP source. "Statistics show a huge rise in trafficking in central Asia. Last year on the Tajik-Afghan border, there was a fivefold increase in heroin seizures alone."
The interior ministry announcement comes as senior UNDCP sources told the Guardian that the price of a shot of heroin has slumped to between 6p and 9p in some areas of central Asia, including Pakistan.
Analysts point to a crackdown on the opium trade in the area's main producer, Afghanistan.
"Production was low in Afghanistan in 2001 [under the end of the Taliban regime]," said a senior UNDCP analyst, based in Vienna. "As there was less opium, prices went up. But a lot of opium had already been converted to heroin, so there was a stockpile. Heroin was plentiful and did not change in price.
"In Europe there is no market for opium, so when the price of opium goes up so does heroin. But around Afghanistan, where there is this cult of opium smoking, then a rise in opium prices and cheap heroin leads to people switching to the cheaper drug. We have heard in Iran and Pakistan this was the case since early 2001 when opium prices started rising."
Many involved in drug trafficking are paid with drugs, which they in turn sell at a cut price, contributing to the fall in cost.
Some of the most alarming growth figures for abuse come from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, where heroin use doubled between 1998 and 2000.