World losing global battle against drug trafficking - FSKN chief
MOSCOW. Feb 14 (Interfax) - The world is losing a global battle against drug trafficking, and Russia will keep trying to reverse the situation as the G8 president, Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) head Viktor Ivanov said.
"So far, the world has been experiencing a fiasco," he told Russian students, who would attend the G8 Youth Summit, in Moscow on Friday.
Russia "will offer mechanisms for the reduction of the threat of drug abuse to the world" within the G8 framework, he said.
The UN General Assembly Political Declaration on Global Drug Control of 1998 has not been fulfilled as of yet, Ivanov continued. The declaration aimed at a drastic decline in drug crop lands.
"Sixteen years have passed but we have to admit that the areas under these crops have not only failed to reduce but have even grown. The areas under coca crops have enlarged by approximately 1.5 times. Speaking of Afghanistan, the areas under opium poppy reached their historical maximum of 209,000 hectares last year," the service head reported.
He said earlier that Afghan drugs had killed over one million people in Eurasia in the past twelve years.
Some 1.5 million Russians are addicted to heroin, and the country has 8 million drug addicts in all, Ivanov said last Tuesday.
He reported on January 14 that up to 70,000 Russians aged from 15 to 34 were killed by drugs each year.
Ivanov said last year that over 12 million Russians had done drugs at least once in their lives.
According to the FSKN, Russia is the No. 1 consumer of Afghan heroin, which comes through Central Asian republics.
