Boris Kalachev: “The problem of drug addiction is comparable to environmental and nuclear”
According to the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, in our country - 8,5 million people, to one degree or another dependent on drugs, every year tens of thousands of drug addicts die. And there were years when 120-140 thousands died too! 26 June 2013 The report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime stated the leadership of Russia in the number of people who inject drugs. If you believe this assessment, then almost every 50 Russian is with a syringe ... Century editor-in-chief Alexei Timofeev talks about the past, present and future in the field of drugs with the author of our publication, candidate of law Boris Kalachev.- Boris Fedorovich, the statistics on drugs is heavy, it just depresses. And here the other day oppositionist Alexei Navalny said that in Moscow there are up to a million drug addicts ...
- That's how rumors are born! It turns out that with a population of the capital in 12 million people, every 12 is a drug addict! We must say this! These are some purely political games, or, as they say, a man blurted out without thinking.
But the situation remains difficult. I started working on the drug problem from 1979, from the student’s seat. It turns out, 35 years over her bloat. As far back as 1980, I carried out the first mathematical calculations in the USSR about the “price” of illegal drug trafficking. For the end of 1970-x such reached 109,4 million Soviet rubles or $ 182,3 million at the rate of the ruble of that time. The amount seemed enormous, it was hard to believe. Today, this is a miser, since “black” drug trafficking exclusively on the territory of the Russian Federation is estimated to be no less than $ 25 billion - 137 times more than in the entire Soviet Union of the end of 1970's! So with drug users. Then there were about 60 thousand people registered, and now, according to health data, more than 530 thousand or 9 times ... And absolutely contrasting statistics: in 1950, for the first time in the RSFSR, the health authorities were addicted turned, attention, 153 addict. In 3,5, a thousand less than today ...
Of course, scientists all these years have trumpeted in all the pipes, advised, called upon, urged to give the drug business hydra on the head in such a way that little would seem. Future trends in the medium term, up to five years ahead, were predicted in advance and fairly accurately, according to them were proposed complexes of measures - interdisciplinary, at the intersection of many sciences, and interdepartmental, with the participation of almost all structures: state, public, political, as in the center, and on the ground ... However, it was recommended to recommend, but it was not always possible to implement the intentions.
- Why? The case was sabotaged, there were not enough professionals, money?
- Modern language is customary to say - political will is not enough. However, there is in our stories and a positive example. In 1980 I happened to explore a lot of funds of state archives. In particular, these are the documents I found in the Central Archive of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. After the removal of Nikita Khrushchev from power in 1964, the Councils of Ministers of the RSFSR and the USSR poured letters from parents whose children were addicted to drugs during the “Khrushchev thaw” period. In the RSFSR they fell to G.I. Voronov, and in the union office - to A.N. Kosygin. In one of these letters, a Saratov resident complained: “... For the second year already, this infection has spread to more and more people. It is enough to visit squares, on Chernyshevsky Square, near the Dinamo Stadium, in the Covered Market, on Kirov Avenue, in order to see with your own eyes groups of schoolchildren, working boys, and students who smoke hashish. Now a number of parents are taking their teenagers out of the city, both from those affected by plague or cholera ... ” In the end, all these people's tears were collected, studied other “hot” information, subjected to a general analysis, hooked up by the KGB of the USSR, and by joint efforts for three or four years, the problem was pacified somewhere to the middle of 1970's. So the answer to the question: decided - done! By the way, what is unpleasant for me, a veteran of the internal affairs bodies, to say, in the course of that operation, secret communications of various levels with organized drug-related crimes came to light. Then there were closed military tribunals, harsh sentences were announced ... In general, an instructive, albeit a sad story.
- Did you mention the “hot information” collected along with the citizens' letters, what was meant? And why only for ten years it was possible to contain the further growth of the problem?
- Information? She was plenty. For example, in the report of criminological experts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR it was reported that in Turkmenistan alone there were then 250-300 thousand drug addicts. In the country, drug traffickers from Central Asia and the Transcaucasia acted, drugged the major cities of the European part of the RSFSR. One mafia group of some Ibragimov from 200 gangsters sold 100 kg of medical morphine and cocaine, thus providing the black market with millions of doses! At the same time, in Kirghizia, collective and state farms refused to provide shelter and food for police officers assigned to destroy illegal opium poppy and cannabis crops. The leaders of the rural communities of Central Asia asserted that these plants "increase the well-being of the collective farmers" ...
And for a long time to stop the problem failed for a simple reason. The theory of "developed socialism" rejected the very possibility of the presence in the country of the communist future of negative social phenomena - drug addiction, prostitution, vagrancy, and others. And there is no negativity, which means there is nothing to resist. It’s like a naked king tale. Without careful supervision, the problem of addiction began to gain momentum again.
By the way, the experts in 1970, among other things, expressed the opinion that an environmentally thoughtful replacement of wild hemp growing in the Chui Valley with other plants was needed. At the governmental level, this proposal was rejected under the pretext that in this case, sand would immediately fill up everything, and the entire Soviet Union would become Karakum. It is hemp, it turns out, which restrained the disastrous movement of the sands, and no other crops were supposedly overwhelmed by such an ecological property. Stupidity? No, deliberate, self-serving lobbying of the interests of organized drug crime. Which existed exclusively in the bourgeois world, as they drove into the head of the people. Familiarize yourself with Chingiz Aitmatov's novel “The Block” - and you will understand everything.
“Well, such facts are characteristic both for the Soviet period and for the following years, and not only for the drug problem ...”
- I know one thing. The silence led to thousands of deaths of allegedly non-existent drug addicts! Working in the criminal investigation, I had to see all this with my own eyes many times. Moreover, among the working youth, students were used mainly, so to speak, plebeian, primitive drugs - marijuana, hashish, household chemicals. And the “elite” youth, the children of the “big people” were familiar with heroin, cocaine, and LSD. But it was simply forbidden to pry into the social strata of operatives-policemen; in fact, the Ministry of the Interior was fighting crime among workers, peasants and not too high-ranking employees.
You know, I can tell a bag stories that could not get into the press of those years. Here is such, for example, nightmare. In the second half of 1970, MUR employees encountered a terrible incident: two drug-teacher-teaching graduate dissertations (a homosexual couple) from a prestigious university of the capital were found dead in the apartment. They were found by the spreading smell of a corpse, the door was broken. We sat in the chair one on the other, and as it turned out, we were in a state of drug intoxication while living. The one that was on the bottom had his face torn together, his partner in a sexy rage smacked. And he himself choked with a lover stuck in the throat with an eyeball. Heroin was found in the apartment, very rare in those times. However, maybe such stories are not worth finding out for a normal person?
- Drug addiction for Russia is clearly a borrowed phenomenon, isn't it?
- Of course. I will not go into details, because I have already written enough about this, I would only note that before the development of the Caucasus and Central Asia by the Russian empire there was no drug addiction in the state. In the South, in the Kuban, Cossacks and peasants were well aware of the narcotic properties of cannabis, which grew in abundance, but the old-timers did not remember that someone stuffed cannabis marijuana, although they knew about the intoxicating properties at the time of flowering. But hemp oil was chewed with porridge, fried on it, used to treat ailments.
The conclusion is simple. The degree of spiritual and everyday culture, the level of a healthy lifestyle among ancestors was much higher than in our days, even if they lived without the Internet. They lived in the countryside among hemp fields and are not addicts. It would be nice to return Russian society to such standards of healthy life.
- It turns out that all the misfortunes after the development of the East began?
- No, the West threw up even more actively. Writers, artists, scientists, travelers after visiting regions of the world where household addiction was present, essentially promoted drug addiction in the Old World and the Russian Empire. Gautier, Dumas-father, Delacroix, Daumier, Flaubert, Conan-Doyle, Sigmund Freud, Berezin, Lukomski, Pelican, Miklouho-Maclay - the list goes on. Doctors put a hand, tried to rid opium of alcoholism, after which the drunkard became an opium addict. Opiomans were treated with morphine, morphine cocaine, cocainists - with heroin. And so in different combinations received new types of dependence. There was no experience yet, he came much later, decades later ...
- The use of cocaine and other drugs, by the way, is often found in books describing the events of those years. This is the story of Mikhail Bulgakov “Morphine”, his own novel “The White Guard” and the play “Zoykin's apartment”, where the Chinese sell cocaine in NEP Moscow. Kokainists in the punitive detachment of whites are mentioned in the “Silent Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov, it is written about those among the KGB men in Milgunov’s “The Red Terror” ...
- Yes, indeed, the problem then reached a qualitatively different level. Although the funds I studied at the Central State Archive of the Russian Federation (the Central State Archive named after the October Revolution, now the GARF) also speak of the active struggle of the Cheka officers on cocaine trafficking, for example, in Moscow.
The most superficial study of the drug situation of that time reveals much ... In the work of V. Garovoy-Sholtan, “Morphinism, its distribution and prevention” (Moscow, 1928), phantasmagoric examples are cited. It tells about one party member to whom his friend offered drugs "as a means to overcome fatigue and reduce the nervous tension caused by work during Yudenich’s offensive on Petrograd." The “club of morphinists”, created at the height of the revolutionary events on one of the warships, is described. No less instructive is the story of the prodotryad, where the nine drug addicts, inclined to the vice of the tenth fighter, ready on the way back "to give everything to get morphine." It was not by chance that the order of the Cheka and the Criminal Investigation Department “On the fight against cocaine speculation” appeared in 1918, signed by V.D. Bonch-Bruevich ...
- And what happened in 1930-e and during the Great Patriotic War?
- Under the Stalin regime, all persons who were somehow illicitly associated with drugs were subjected to isolation in prisons and camps. The society was forcibly, repressively cleared not only of dissidents, but also of drug addicts. This purge, as well as the Great Patriotic War, drove drug addiction in the deaf underground. But she was waiting for her hour, which came in 1953, when Beria, after Stalin’s death, released an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of prisoners, among which, in addition to the so-called political prisoners, breathed an air of freedom, intimidated scumbags, incorrigible recidivists familiar with the marathon from the time of NEP. They set the addiction rate, caught up in an ill-conceived "Khrushchev thaw." And during the period of “perestroika”, the events associated with drugs acquired a mirror similarity with 1960. However, each decade, each rise and fall in the drug problem can be given a separate interview.
- I have repeatedly heard about the impressive costs of combating drug crime and more than modest returns from them.
- Alas, alas. There is one more serious question here. It is not by chance that I always call for the adoption of good foreign experience. Take the same America, no matter how criticized it. Employees of the Office of Drug Enforcement at the US Department of Justice (DEA), by the decision of the courts, withdraw money from the drug mafia to the special anti-drug budget. And they spend confiscated not on salary increase, but on the improvement of working conditions, the purchase of special equipment, preventive measures, etc. From 1990 to the present, these revenues fluctuate within $ 200-250 million, or even higher (in addition to the annual state budget allocations for the maintenance of the service). Yes, with this money ... Similarly in Great Britain, Italy, other European states, Egypt ... We have no such practice, although there existed in the Russian Empire and in the era of Soviet power, before 1946. It was from Russia that foreigners adopted such fiscal experience, and we buried him. And now for us like that - fiction. Why? Because it was not a frivolous, but a real criminal lobby in 2003 that achieved the exclusion of confiscation of property from the Criminal Code. And the country has lived for three years without this repressive institution to the delight of drug lords, financial fraudsters, thieves, etc.
Quite a few sensible experts wrote hundreds of scientific articles, made no less public speeches in the press, on television, radio, on the Internet, organized a lot of conferences and round tables, even parliamentary hearings. The controversy was stormy. Ultimately, in 2006, with the assistance of the Presidential Administration, the confiscation was formally returned to the Criminal Code. But, firstly, not in the form in which it was before, that is, not as a measure of additional punishment, and, secondly, it is far from the forms of confiscation adopted in truly market-oriented states of the world.
- What is the difference between confiscation, as an additional punishment, and confiscation, what is in effect today?
- Great question. Confiscation, as an additional form of punishment, has existed in the Western and Eastern worlds, as they say, since the time of the King of Peas. In our country, she effectively worked for over a thousand years, until 2003. Its use means removing everything valuable from a criminal, leaving him as much as the English policeman put it at a round table in the State Duma to have “enough for a glass of milk and a piece of bread ". Now confiscate in the Russian Federation only such property is admissible, which by the court will be proven, as obtained by criminal means. In practice, this means: not caught, not a thief. Deputy Alexander Gurov liked to give such an example in this connection. “Imagine,” he said, “caught red-handed heroin dealer. Withdrawn the amount of money he received from the buyer for a dose of a sold drug, let's say one and a half thousand rubles, and heroin itself. And he still has 20 thousand rubles in his pockets. And home golden toilet. But do not dare to touch this money and precious metal, for it has not been proven that they were mined in a criminal way. ”
That is the difference. The country has launched a mechanism that is wild for foreigners: the criminals are cleaning the society, but the society is not able to take back the loot.
- Well, now - the perennial question: is drug abuse curable or not?
- In stories about the magic disaccustoming from drugs for a week, month, year - I have no faith, these are myths. When I was a teenager, smoking was addicted. Then after a decade in one day, he took it and left it! It took about three years for dreams to stop dreaming, as if I was dying to dizziness, and about five years to finally forget about this addiction. For alcoholics, the heat of weaning is even sharper, but for drug addicts, to be honest, I can’t even imagine what they are in pitch of hell when breaking occurs. People die from it! Yes, you can get rid of the physiological dependence, but the nail about the already tested “sweet high” is clogged in the memory. Will sit in the brain until death, only the indomitable strength of will can save from another fall. Drug addiction is a heavy burden. Those who show willpower, after a long time, “forget” about their experiences, fearing to lose their family, work, life - a little. Most pass a terrible way to the end.
Nevertheless, the last four years, the incidence of drug addiction is slowly declining, this is a welcome signal. And it becomes less, not so much because it has become better to cure, but because the preventive coverage of the population is increasing. Seeing all the same, many. One anti-tobacco propaganda is expensive. Two months ago, the Government approved a program on the broad social rehabilitation of addicts. In Russia, a real revolution in terms of overcoming vice can happen. I would like these plans to take place, to work at full capacity. Do not plunder the money allocated - it should work. The counting chamber and the prosecutor's office, other regulatory agencies need to be alert. But here it is impossible to overreach the stick, but instead of rehabilitation, there are solid checks.
It is necessary to more actively connect and religious communities.
Returning to foreign experience again, I’ll note: there, if the percentage of cured reaches 20-30 percent, this is recognized as the height of achievement. Moreover, the cost of such treatment is high, one day costs at least $ 100-300, and a mother addict with a child costs up to a thousand and more dollars. In Russia, the cost of treatment and its effectiveness, taking into account not the withdrawal of the abstinence syndrome, but the complete deliverance from the pathology, is a mystery. Unless, of course, do not focus on cheerful reports. I calculated how many children of drug addicts are born every year at the end of 1980, it turned out to be 25 million. Only in the USA 1988 was born in 375 thousand babies crippled by drug mothers ... I am not aware of modern numbers. One of my graduate students was engaged in this topic in zero years, bypassed maternity homes, collected statistics, made suggestions, but for some reason her recommendations didn’t turn out to be necessary after a successful dissertation defense in practice ...
- As you know, there are almost no long-lived drug addicts. Their brains, livers, and kidneys are burned to 30 years. But, as I understood, including from your articles, the threat of drugs to the genetic potential of mankind is especially great. Their historical role in the formation of a kind of dead-end branches of civilization development is monitored. Coca leaves that contain cocaine were a domestic drug among Inca workers. Europeans pioneers described the emaciated species of Coquero, a high mortality rate among them. According to chroniclers, Coca was one of the symbols of Indian Peru, a tragic symbol ...
- The founder of Russian neurogenetics, academician S.N. Davidenkov formulated the following law: the deeper the pathology of the ancestors, the brighter it appears among descendants. Even "light" drugs (although the division into "light" and "heavy" is inappropriate, the old woman with a scythe in those and others), affect human genetics and the consequences of their use can affect many generations. The rooting of domestic drug addiction inevitably leads to the degeneration of the nation ... Drugs are a strong, long-lasting genetic weapon mass destruction. That is why the problem of drug addiction is placed alongside the problems of environmental and nuclear.
- How, then, should the ideas arising in our country and abroad about the legalization of certain types of drugs or even drug addiction as a whole be treated? The discussion about this is constantly being conducted in the USA, strong liberal steps have been taken in Switzerland, in France and other states.
- Back in 1920, in a number of countries an attempt was made to legalize drugs, but each time it ended with a significant worsening of cases. Probably, the wheel of history is turning again, humanity is advancing on the same rake. Such ideas are realized largely from the powerlessness of the authorities to cope with drug traffickers, and then the state assumes the role of a legitimate gangster selling previously forbidden goods. However, believe me, the illegal drug business will not disappear. Similarly, the underground alcohol sector did not evaporate during the times of the “dry laws”, state monopolies, and the transfer of alcohol to commerce. Unscrupulous part of the population stubbornly drove the moonshine.
Over the decades of immersion in the topic of drugs, I came to the conclusion: their legalization is the mafia's method of transforming revenues from “dirty” money into “clean” money. As a result of legalized drug policies, it is no longer spontaneous, but a market for drug sales is being organized in an organized manner, that is, with the support of the state, something is being created that inevitably destroys it. After all, hashish, cocaine, heroin and other drugs are still nothing other than alcohol or tobacco. The chemical happiness obtained from drugs is more powerful than X-VUMX-15 vodka, faster and more addictive. In addition, practice shows that every addict during his life on average, another seven people are involved in this quagmire.
- Yes, but popular youth magazines enthusiastically describe foreign experience, where city authorities donate parks to drug addicts with a registered issue of potions and clean syringes. It would seem that everything is not bad - the dark corners were cleared, the police became easier, and the drug addicts who lost their human appearance became a clear anti-advertisement of vice ...
“The book by the Dutch writer Yvonne Köls," The Mother of David S., Born on July 3, 1959, "sat in my memory. I recommend to read. This documentary novel, written after meetings and conversations with parents of drug addicts, is popular in Spain, the USA, France, Germany, other countries. The father of one of the drug addicts, who has fallen into complete despair, shouts on the street: “People! Listen! Drugs ... This is not the age of cosmonautics, this is the century of drugs! .. Let the death penalty be imposed again! The death penalty for all drug dealers, because they are killers. Money-hungry murderers from around the corner, killing our children! .. We must demand the mandatory hospitalization of all drug addicts. When an epidemic of poliomyelitis or meningitis begins, patients are also taken to hospitals, not only in their own interests, but also to prevent the spread of infection. And let the addict walk for himself, although he is contagious, he draws his friends into drugs ... And in the Netherlands there are enough progressive teachers and youth leaders who approve the so-called soft drugs and even recommend them! .. Hashish and marijuana open the door for heroin! .. what is the government doing? It stimulates drug use! In the seventy-sixth, a new opium law was introduced: storing up to thirty grams of cannabis is no longer a crime! And the government allows the price of different varieties of hashish to be announced on the radio! And no one else, like the son of our minister Forrink! .. What happened to me may soon happen to thousands. And no instance will help! Children are dying, parents are dying, the country is dying. The Netherlands are dying ... "
- The influence of external organized crime has a strong impact on the rule of law in our country. How many articles have already been published and filmed a film about the situation in the same Pamirs, where drug smuggling from Afghanistan is flourishing. The case is thoroughly settled, the whole system works with its intelligence, militants, high connections and silent support of the population. Have we adapted American standards when, according to local experts in 1989-1991, the influence of criminal syndicates "penetrates from the city streets into the halls of Congress". Indeed, according to political strategists, 15 percent of the sums spent on election campaigns are allocated to Cosa Nostroy, and, according to another researcher, at least 25 deputies were elected to the Senate House of Representatives with the assistance of this criminal organization.
“We touched on the epic with the confiscation of property. What is the topic of corruption again to expose? The picture is really alarming. If we consider the East, whether it be the post-Soviet republics or Afghanistan, and in Asia ethnologists and the Caucasus include, there, on the ground, an innumerable number of plots with poppy crops, fertilized with caustic chemistry. Nitric, even more poisonous opium is collected from the poisoned milky juice, and “atomic” heroin is synthesized. Already during anti-drug operations at sunset, there was a dull opposition, and at a high level. There were helicopter and other failures. At the end of 1980-x - the beginning of 1990-x, I used to take part in anti-drug campaigns in those regions. So, the officials of the airfields, employees of the anti-drug units prevented the refueling of helicopters engaged in Operation Mac-90. The previous operation, “Mac-89,” so she choked altogether: the troops and the police, sent there, were forced to switch to the suppression of riots. And the role of "opium bai" in the organization of atrocities was revealed indisputably. Activists received on hands 25-100 Soviet rubles daily. And the mob of thugs generously fueled by drugs. Do you think the picture has changed fundamentally?
Yes, what to say! According to expert conclusions, in the republics of the former Soviet Union, there were about 10 million professional felons, of whom at least 60 thousand were drug dealers. And what, after a quarter of a century in the conditions of economic ruin and unemployment, they became less? The freshest example: 27 in May 2014 at the “Lyaur” testing ground in Tajikistan was the summing up of the local anti-drug operation “Channel-South trap”. According to the plan and the number of attracted forces - the operation deserves the highest praise. Many thousands of people from various departments and states were involved, hundreds and hundreds of raids were carried out in order to block the border area. But! Of all the 12,4 tons of drugs seized, only 250 kg or 2 percent of the total weight fell on heroin, the most expensive of all goods taken away from criminals. 2 percent on the same drug, which, if you believe the Russian media, well, just flooded our country. Where have disappeared, where tons of heroin penetrating into the CIS from Afghanistan have been leaked through thousands of fighters? Exactly the same picture took place with similar international operations a decade ago.
I would not be surprised if it turns out that today in the neighboring states there was a final monopolization of law enforcement agencies and special services by representatives of the clans engaged in drug trafficking, from seeding to marketing. Hence the leakage of information and the 2 percent of the heroin mentioned above as a result of a large-scale international operation.
“It looks like it happened.” “Opium bai” in their regions, be it Afghanistan or the post-Soviet Pamirs, have reached the degree of influence of the Colombian “coca barons”. Or Bolivian drug dealers for an amount twice the value of the country's total exports. What do you think?
- The source of raw materials for such intercontinental comparisons has long been in the above-mentioned regions, it is steadily expanding.
I can only say one thing: no matter how much the UN, the European Union and other world actors point to this trend, no matter how much money they bring in the same Afghanistan, no matter what programs they carry out - all as if they were peas! Well, straight, even get in the bomber and burn down the opium and hemp fields! Let us recall how many times Moscow warned Washington that its ambiguous policy regarding drugs in Afghanistan would not bring the good news? However, neither the Afghan people themselves, nor their leaders, nor foreign advisers, nor international organizations have created an effective economy there for many years. For whatever reason, one can only guess.
- Apparently, in spite of the dynamics of decrease in the drug problem noted by you, we are still in for great tests in this area ...
- What do you think? I am very worried about the so-called smoking mixtures, these spice-masses are a new type of substance for another drug aggression. A cheap drug at the expense of wide distribution brings a good income, it can again whip up the drug problem, give it a second wind. There are millions of potential drug users in Russia. Go through the city’s railway stations and hotels, parks and residential areas - there are clearly defined crime zones through the step.
I had a conviction verified by time. The problem of addiction can not be solved separately, pointwise. Effective, clearly felt results will be achieved only through comprehensive prevention and suppression of drug addiction, drunkenness, tobacco smoking, prostitution, vagrancy and begging, homelessness and neglect, increasing the value of marriage and family, being eaten away today by civilian cohabitation. And, which is extremely important - by streamlining migration processes from outside to Russia.
- 20 March 2014, director of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia Viktor Ivanov, the United States declared persona non grata - treacherously included in the sanctions list. Can this step of the American administration somehow influence the state of the drug problem?
- Of course. Any scuffle between states that are energetically engaged in the fight against transnational organized crime, international terrorism is in the interests of the criminals and their bosses. They cooperate with each other, regardless of skin color, religion, political outlook and geographical location. For them, the main thing - super-profits. The deeper the international instability, the easier it is for them to achieve financial success, the stronger they can influence the policy, both domestic and foreign, international. I think these guys are using all the levers at their disposal to tighten the political confrontation between the US and Russia. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, the main draft work on exposing drug criminals does not occur at the top, but on the so-called ground, below. Therefore, I am sure, workers, business contacts between the Federal Drug Control Service and the DEA (DEA) should not collapse. Otherwise, who will save the world on earth from a narcotic contagion?
- I know that in 1999 you and the now deceased General A.N. Sergeev, the head of the Main Directorate for Combating Illicit Drug Trafficking of the Ministry of the Interior of Russia, the founder of the opposition to this problem in our country, presented to the Civil Society Award of the Vienna UN Office for his outstanding contribution to the fight against drug abuse. How did it happen that neither he nor you were given a reward? It was about the material incentives in the amount of $ 220 thousand, an impressive amount.
- There was such a thing. Alexander Nikolaevich declined from this honor, because he considered it ethically awkward as a high-level leader and in the rank of general to become the owner of such a large capital for that time. He podzhuzhil me all, come on, Boris, draw up documents, we will break through to you this wealth, deserved. I even collected the necessary recommendations on such an occasion from authoritative people from the highest authorities and public organizations. But then the started vanity slowed down. One veteran of the special services told me in confidence that I would not get the money anyway, at best, three to five thousand. The rest will be hijacked by various funds, which in those years attached themselves to the Ministry like bugs. And I realized that my advisor is right.
I thought and wrote on the back of the document for the award that I find it expedient to issue this money at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as I owe my official success to the team that I lead and colleagues from other departments of the institute. We did not have time to dry the ink - all the premium fuss stopped: the extortionists-corrupt officials, who wanted to warm their hands, understood that they could somehow cope with one person, but no four hundred people armed with pens could cope with the whole institute.
- To whom this award was awarded, in the end?
- Not to the institute, the Russian servicemen who guarded the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan from drug smuggling. When I found out about this, my heart became lighter, the dollars fell into good hands, to people who deserved them with sweat and blood. Although there were doubts, based on their own experience, they reached the addressees or spread out to other wallets.
- Well, Boris Fedorovich, I think the main thing in this conversation we have touched. Although the topic is immense ...
- In fact of the matter. These are procedures for treating drug addicts, how they are best carried out - voluntarily or by force. And the epidemic of AIDS and HIV among drug addicts, drug money laundering, ethnic crime related to drugs ... All this requires more detailed coverage.
And today we will celebrate the International Day against Drugs in a cheerful state of mind. Drug mafia will not pass!
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