Federal Drug Control Service organizes two labs in Moscow to study spices
MOSCOW. July 30 (Interfax) - The Federal Drug Control Service's Department for Moscow intends to open two laboratories to recognize various types of spice as analogues of narcotic substances.
"A decision has been made that we will deploy a laboratory in the Federal Drug Control Service and in the Sechenov Institute where we can recognize spices as analogues of narcotic substances," Yury Devyatkin, deputy head of the Federal Drug Control Service's Department for Moscow, told reporters on Wednesday.
Devyatkin said the lab in the Federal Drug Control Service's Department for Moscow will begin working in the second half of 2014 and the lab in the Sechenov Institute will open in 2015-2016.
"We will conduct toxicology tests on mice. It will help us recognize spices as analogues of narcotic substances more quickly. Chemists synthesize new substances every two days, although they are of the same type," he said.
Devyatkin said 100 crimes involving spice turnover were resolved in the first half of 2014 against 29 in 2013.
"We have to release most of the people we detain because the substances disseminated by them are not narcotics under our legislation," Devyatkin said.