On the evening of February 23, it became known that on the eve of Yekaterinburg, police officers detained opposition activist Alexander Litreev. He found two tablets of MDMA (ecstasy), which by weight passes already as a significant size. Litreev pleaded guilty, now he is in jail, he faces up to three years in prison. The girlfriend with whom he was, goes on trial as a witness. It is known that she is in her first year at a university in Yekaterinburg.
The easiest way now would be to write a column “Another oppositionist turned out to be a drug addict and a person with a poor moral character. Look, children, and don’t go there. ” Or, conversely, the column “Another provocation of the security forces: the girl lured the opposition to Yekaterinburg and“ divorced ”him to buy drugs.”
It seems to me that it is much more important to push off from this example, just not focusing on the political views of the detainee, and talk about state drug policy. Which now gives any effect, except for an effective fight against the spread and consumption of drugs, especially with young people.
For a specific story, I’ll say three things at once. First: I do not use drugs (none) and treat them without any tolerance. Second: breaking the law is obvious. Moreover, to visit a freshman girl and go buy drugs with her is not the actions of an adult and at least a minimally responsible person. Is this an offense worth three years in prison? Not worth it. Will this story help anti-drug propaganda among young people in a situation where a freshman considers it normal to meet with a friend to go buy drugs with him? Will not help. And now we will understand why all state drug policies need a global review. Unless, of course, we want this very policy to really save people from drugs.
Article 228 of the Criminal Code (“Illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, manufacture, processing of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances or their analogues, as well as illegal acquisition, storage, transportation of plants containing narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances, or their parts containing narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances ”) in Russian zones has long been called“ folk ”. On it sits a significant number of people in each colony.
At the same time, one of the largest resources on the online drug trade, Hydra, has worked and feels happy. When I was in the summer in the same Yekaterinburg, I personally saw the ads “Courier work, 70 tr. per month ”, painted throughout the city, and one of them - about twenty meters from the residence of the governor of the Sverdlovsk region. That is, he sees this announcement every time he goes to work. Through such advertisements they usually gain mortgages, mainly young people who long for easy money go to work there. The average life of the mortgagor is a few months, after which the owners of the "shops" themselves often surrender it to the police.
Some time ago, RT described in detail how this market works. Further, young people with reduced social responsibility sit for a long time, in the colony they meet their yesterday's customers - the same young people. The owners of the "stores" are hiring new mortgages. All new 18-year-olds go into the dark and provide sellers of all kinds of rubbish with constant profit, and the owners of large online sites pour themselves expensive champagne and live with huge amounts of money and not knowing any fear. State Duma deputies are shaking the air with new bans and habitually suggest extending the time frame. And the police report “sticks”: rather unpretentious, but - most importantly - numerous criminal cases against consumers or drug couriers. The online platform "Hydra" is available, lives and lives, its owners are doing fine.
Break your life. Themselves
With the way the state drug policy and the fight against drugs work, last year I personally faced several times.
The first time is the well-known case of Meduza journalist Ivan Golunov, who was planted with drugs by police officers and who was able to repel the whole world and only because Golunov never used drugs or touched them (here, by the way, there’s a great reason never use drugs).
I didn’t tell anyone about the second time.
Each person who is engaged in helping other people, each journalist and social activist has his own personal “cemetery”. These are those people who not just failed to help, but those who, without waiting for help, died.
This story is from my personal “cemetery”. A woman turned to me and said that her friend (rather young) had become a hostage by stupidity. Then she got scared, decided to go out. The owners of the “store” took all her documents from her and set a condition: she works for another two months, then the documents will be returned. If he runs away from them and tries to jump off, and even more so if he tells someone, they will kill her and everyone who helps her.
The girl decided to take a chance, ran to another apartment. Changed the number. The owners of the "store" found it.
The second apartment. Same. The owners of the “store” told her that they had a great cover for the security forces, which made it possible to listen to her phone and calculate her whereabouts — so don't rock the boat.
I said the only option is to run to the police. I asked my friends who had police connections. Here is a person who is ready to turn in a “store” - a seemingly profitable story about disclosure.
The girl, meanwhile, continued to go crazy under the pressure of drug dealers. Help did not come. The girl committed suicide.
As they later told me from the police, their story was not taken seriously, since she was registered as socially disadvantaged, LGBT - and in general all this unhappy love led to such an outcome. That is, the story with the "store" she almost made up.
She was not even questioned.
So, today's drug policy is the landing of couriers and consumers, but almost a green corridor to drug dealers.
Now about the punishment.
What do you think, if a student is imprisoned for three years for drug use (as a rule, the greatest temptation to try something forbidden occurs in high school or at the institute), this will help to correct him and ensure that he never again in life with drugs did not contact?
No, exactly the opposite. As practice shows, Russian zones are not a drug-free place. Let us recall at least a loud case when prisoners used a cat to deliver drugs to the area. And most importantly - a young man after serving with a 99% probability will forever lose the chance to return to normal life in society, finish his studies, get a good job and by the age of 30 come to the idea of leading a completely healthy lifestyle. There is a much greater chance that his path will now lie down: they don’t take a job, there is no education, you have to go to work as a drug courier, a second imprisonment, a third imprisonment, death under the fence.
That is, instead of preventing a person from breaking his own life, the state breaks his life.
The same thing happens with drug couriers who are imprisoned for much longer periods (from eight to ten years), after which no rehabilitation is possible. And the zones at the same time, everything continues to replenish with new consumers and mortgages. After all, neither the landing of the consumer nor the landing of the mortgagor block access to the purchase of drugs. And the landing of the owners of "stores", that is, sellers, as well as manufacturers, is overlapping. Roughly speaking, drugs should be impossible to buy. In the current system, the “store”, as well as the online exchange, remain, the market is functioning. Moreover, I’ll say a monstrous thing, but such a system just works to maintain the drug trade market: “stores” provide the police with human material that is convenient to increase the statistics on detection, the police ... The police indicate in the protocol the cause of death “suicide”, without trying to find out who on the eve visited the apartment of the deceased and who talked to her so that she decided to reduce her scores to life.
That is, such a drug policy and such a system of punishments does not contribute to the fight against drug trafficking.
The whole truth about drugs. 18+
In recent years, parents of adolescents are increasingly saying that they are not afraid that they will catch a child with a bottle of beer or a cigarette, as teenagers of my or older generation came across mostly. The current rules of trade, constant checks lead to the fact that even men over 40 require a passport when buying a pack of cigarettes, while adolescents will not be sold alcohol or cigarettes anywhere in decent stores. But when buying drugs, a passport is not asked. Therefore, the horror of the situation is that, indeed, from the “forbidden”, which attracts every teenager, in fact, the most affordable drugs turn out to be.
And here I would like to talk about anti-drug propaganda. I recently saw Jackson Galaxy's Hell Cat on a shelf in a bookstore. The author of the book is a zoopsychologist, the book itself is devoted to how you can adjust the behavior of cats, properly equip their space in the apartment for life, find a common language with them, and so on. At the same time, the mark “18+” was on the book. No, there was no pornography and not even a single swear word. It’s just that the author also told a personal story how love for animals and volunteering in a shelter for them helped him overcome alcohol and drug addiction, which had brought him to the bottom before that. A bright and kind story that makes you think.
Unfortunately, according to Russian law, it is forbidden for teenagers who just need to read such stories to get acquainted with such content - unless the senior comrade buys it and transfers it from under the floor.
The activities of individual politicians to “protect children from unwanted information” have led to the fact that effective anti-drug propaganda has become virtually impossible.
I'll tell you a personal story again.
I at one time (about 14 years old) forever got rid of the idea of an experiment with substances two things. The first is the little blue pamphlet The Whole Truth About Drugs, obtained from the subway on the way to school in the late 1990s. The brochure simply, without emotions, told in detail about all the main types of drugs (then there was a boom of ecstasy), their effect on the body and the consequences. Each page of the brochure, which was convenient to carry in your pocket, told about another drug. What effect will be, what can it turn into, what will be the result. The description was calm, but very naturalistic. They explained to you in detail how exactly you will die.
As a result of reading this brochure, even in adulthood, when I find myself in the same Amsterdam, where the “forbidden” is accessible and legal, I bypass such stores because I remember that brochure.
The second most effective means of anti-drug propaganda in my life was publications in teen magazines (in the same place where there was information about condoms and HIV in a language accessible to a teenager) about deaths at ecstasy discos, musicians who died from drugs, letters to the editors “I was addicted to drugs , my whole life is crumbling ”and so on. The stories, again, were presented as naturally as possible, the editors did not disdain the most terrible photographs (for example, veins of heroin addicts or ecstasy consumers dying in a pool of their own vomit).
Thus, through brochures and magazines, adolescents suffered a conscious psychological trauma, and quite effective precisely because of the chosen style and visual accompaniment, shocking, gloomy, negative. Moreover, with the thesis "no, well, decide on your own, we will just explain to you what exactly you are betting on." Once I asked in social networks who remembers the brochure “The whole truth about drugs” - it turned out that it had a great influence not only on me, but also on many peers. Yes, this is a psychological trauma. Yes, after reading such articles, you may have a nightmare. But this trauma is inflicted at the right time and in the right place, creating a block in the adolescent's brain and fear of drugs. Now, even with the history of the former drug addict, who was cured by a love of animals, adolescents cannot get acquainted. And at 18+ it can be too late to get acquainted with such stories - as already mentioned, drugs are sold to children without a passport.
It turns out a paradox. Under current legislation, adopted solely “in the interest of children,” these two very effective ways to combat drugs are no longer available. That is, the champions of the "interests of children" did everything they could to increase children's risks and destroy anti-drug propaganda in its effective format.
A teenager in 2020 will not read in a youth magazine how his peer was dying in a disco, choking on his own vomit. But he will open the darknet and order the “cool thing” on the Hydra. Another million on successful trash trading is earned. The owners of the "store", as well as the owners of "Hydra" are not particularly in danger.
It is also practically impossible now to have an honest public conversation about what to do with article 228, which obviously needs to be edited, with drug policies, drug users, drug dealers, and so on, because the advocates of the course “humanizing attitudes toward consumers and tightening attitudes toward traffickers” they are simply indiscriminately accused of drug propaganda (and our dear deputies have already made sure that such an article appears in the Administrative Code), which even the blue brochure may now fall under.
And this conversation is necessary. He is needed by those who want to really make a difference. It is necessary primarily for those who are a real opponent of drugs. Otherwise, 18-year-old university students will continue to consider it a normal trip with a friend to take a bookmark and thus mark the meeting.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.