Abuse of drugs Compared to other big European countries, the abuse of heroin, morphine and opium is strikingly high in Russia. Cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy abuse is lower in the Eastern European countries (Poland and Russia) than in the Western European countries. The abuse of amphetamines is also low in Russia. As with the numbers concerning alcohol, the information in the table below should, however, be used with some caution, cf. the following mention in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) November 25, 2005 8): “While Russia has some 343,000 registered injecting drug users, a United Nations report on AIDS released earlier this month said that the actual number could be four to 10 times as high. Yevgeniya Koshkina, the chief epidemiologist at the Russian Health Ministry's Drug Research Institute, puts the number of drug addicts in the country at over 1.7 million. Drug use exploded in Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, but Koshkina told RFE/RL that drug consumption – including among children – has been stable over the past four years and, in the case of heroin, has even fallen. Gulnara Dovlyatova, a doctor and psychologist at a Moscow clinic treating anonymous child addicts, disagrees. ‘If heroin addiction drops sharply, this does not mean that drug addiction is starting to decline. In my area, for instance, I can say that the flow of heroin has increased this summer,’ Dovlyatova says.’Over the past six months, the age group has been getting younger, the use of domestic chemical substances and glue is growing. Before, it was teenagers aged 14 or 15 who did this, but now it is 10 or 11 year-old children.’” Abuse of drugs in the largest European countries, 1999-2004
1) Data were collected during the period 1999-2004 Source: “World drug report 2006”, UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2006,
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