Drug scene: just a new redivision
By Alexander Zelichenko,
Candidate of Science, Director of the Central Asian Centre for Drug Policy, drug control service colonel in resignation.
It was observed a long time ago that drug scene, or in other words, types of drugs used, methods of production, trafficking and distribution, has always been changing. There are several reasons for that: globalization, trends, politics and economy. Our observations show that a new redivision has begun. What is it going to bring!?
Let’s try to look into it.
… In the thirties-forties of the last century, the Kyrgyz SSR and Kazakh SSR decided to manufacture bast fiber. A whole new industry arose and a network of so-called bast and kanaf (a.k.a. Deccan hemp and Java jute) factories was built. For instance, old residents of Frunze (former, soviet name of Bishkek) remember quite well such a factory where the present Dordoi-Plaza is located. The factory used to have well-developed infrastructure (kindergarten, club, shop) and a large number of workplaces. They produced organic cloth, hard rope and many other things.
Raw materials, cannabis were imported and actively cultivated there. The content of the substance, which caused drug intoxication, was not initially high. However, influenced by a number of local natural climatic factors, it became incredibly high. That was probably the reason why cannabis cultivation stopped in our country in the early 1960s, but most likely it halted due to economic conjuncture.
Since then, the remaining wild-growing “appendicitis” troubled the law enforcement agencies so badly that real military operations were held in the cannabis jungles openly spread in the Zhambyl region of neighboring Kazakhstan, which attracted drug dealers from all over the former Soviet Union. I did witness such operations, during which APCs, helicopters, sniffer dogs and cadets were used from all regions and areas of the vast country.
Recently, neighbors have been making business appeals more and more distinctly: let us revive the “old good” production made of hemp again. It appears that even paper can be made of this malicious weed! Moreover, annually Kazakhstan spends about a hundred million tenge from the national budget to purchase it.
By the way, provided cannabis is not grown again for this purpose and annihilation of wild plants is enough, we should support such an initiative in every possible way and export our “harvests” to our neighbor.
At the same time, opium production was growing. In the fifties-sixties of the twentieth century, Kyrgyzstan legally produced up to 16 percent of world raw opium harvest, which had high content of morphine. The science, persistently trying to increase yields, developed. Collective and state farms grew stronger, which were engaged in cultivation of ‘scarlet poppies’, as well as “Lekrastprom” state enterprise.
Unfortunately, the drug mafia was prospering as well. The black market absorbed a large proportion of the raw harvest. Methods were developed to steal and traffic it. Sometimes crafty and sophisticated hiding-places were made and used.
Once, while checking a bus going from Przhevalsk (nowadays the city of Karakol) to Frunze (today Bishkek), policemen paid attention to a young woman with an infant in her arms. Bus passengers mentioned that the baby had not wept during a long trip and had not been fed at all… The examination showed that 7 kilograms of drugs were transported in the eviscerated corpse!
In 1966, Frunze hosted an All-Union Drug Addiction Conference. For the first time, terrible statistics were released about raw opium embezzlement, huge amounts of drugs confiscated from drug dealers and drug consumption growth. Having got familiarized with the statistics, N. D. Davydova, the USSR Representative in the UN Drugs Committee, resigned. In her resignation letter, the state official indicated that she was not able to lie to the international community saying that drugs distribution and consumption are not relevant to a socialist country…
Kyrgyzstan stopped poppy crops in 1974 following UN resolutions. The mafia kicked the bucket right away although for some time hidden portions of opium were found and confiscated.
By the way, already in the early nineties, evaluating the country’s material asset after the Independence, Kyrgyzstan considered a possibility to revive legal opium production. “Red professors”, old-school academicians and the zealous officialdom called for that. Not wishing to face with realities, they passionately argued that that was the only way to boost the economy. Opium was presented up as a panacea for all misfortunes, a measure of prosperity, a key to future business successes. “We, the indigenous population, enjoy opium immune,” asserted the drug lobby. “We’ve been growing poppy for decades, used it against all diseases and we did not have any drug addicts. And we don’t care about all sorts of moralists!”
The government was reasonable not to slide into cheap populism and pseudo patriotism.
A working group was established comprising best experts. They comprehensively studied the problem beginning from economic feasibility to modern ways of reducing losses. They worked so profoundly that they managed to find even traces of elite poppy seeds which were secretly taken out of the country before the collapse of the Soviet Union…
The conclusion of the commission was categorical – “it is more profitable to plant potatoes”. First, there are quotas for purchasing opium for medical needs although that time opium had been overproduced. Kyrgyzstan would only have to sell it at dumping prices so secondly that would inevitably lead to conflicts with manufacturing countries – India, Pakistan, Turkey and Australia as well as to obstruction of the international community, namely leading powers of the world and the United Nations, which invest a lot in Kyrgyzstan. Today even Afghanistan, which produced over 5,000 tons of cheap drugs last year, is not able to enter the legal opium market.
And finally and thirdly, it was really cheaper and more profitable to cultivate potatoes rather than secure a reliable level of protection of the entire ‘field-factory-pharmacy’ process chain. However, even super technologies, for instance those used in Australia, do not guarantee 100 percent harvest security. If it is cultivated and harvested by means of old-fashioned methods, we would quickly become a zone attracting special attention of international drug mafia. And the Batken 1999-2000 drug invasion, when armed drug terrorists intruded upon the Kyrgyz Republic, would seem to be harmless Boy Scout games…
….Since then, for the long 18 years, the national drug stage has been dominated by derivatives from wild-growing cannabis – hashish and marijuana, and a little later by Ephedrine produced both from medicines and ephedra horsetail.
The police took drug counteraction measures; however, they were not goal-oriented, drug addiction was still considered as a phenomenon which damaged image of a socialist country, therefore it was kept invisible.
Today the anecdotal case I once witnessed seems to be funny when 29 soft drug traffickers were detained on Krasny Bridge in Boomsk gorge. Having found out about that, the Central Committee of Kyrgyzstan Communist Party summoned and reprimanded officials from the Interior Ministry. The active work on suppression of illicit drugs trafficking was winded for some time.
It should be noted that before the collapse of the USSR, efforts, including mine, were refocused from fight against crimes to struggle against drug addiction and trafficking. A unique, absolutely independent investigative structure was established entitled Drug Trafficking Combat Service, which in the first months made a big success by seizing an unprecedentedly big amount of drugs – over two tons of hashish and marijuana to be exported by drug dealers.
The State Drug Control Commission was established in 1993 to strengthen the coordination segment, which was later transformed into the Drug Control Agency. Eliminated by the evil will, it rose from the ashes again in 2010 as the State Drug Control Service and nowadays fully implements functions of preventive and operative-investigative activities.
… In the early nineties of the last century, the drug scene dramatically changed again after “Made in Afghanistan” opium had begun penetrating into our country. Not having seen that drug for almost twenty years, law enforcers were in panic: there was no information or developed counteraction practices. Methods used in the old times of “red poppies” failed to work. Meanwhile, spontaneous seizures often exceeded 10-15 kilograms of drugs. Intensity of drug deliveries, cynicism and quantity of smuggled drugs generated the “drug expansion” term.
Cooperation with neighbors from Gorniy Badakhshan, where from most of Afghan opium was delivered into Kyrgyzstan passing through the Afghan-Tajik border, failed due to the Civil War there as a result of which war lords enjoyed power. Drug fighters learned everything by themselves and soon managed to quickly spot hiding places skillfully set in various details of vehicles running up and down the mountain Khorog – Osh highway. They were aware of local drug traffickers and middlemen, and raised awareness to oppose recruitment of mothers of big families into drug trafficking. In addition, harm reduction tactics appeared to decrease risk of HIV infection and death from overdoses…
And then appeared a new wave of drug trafficking: heroin entered the drug scene. While volumes of contraband decreased (it was much more difficult to spot “hiding places””), its danger dramatically increased: because of huge price of ‘white death’, the organized crime appeared on the scene and transnational organized criminal groups emerged; scales of drug-related corruption increased; heroin persistently fed various terrorists. “Drug economy” appeared, the economy based on drug production and drug trafficking, which has covered many countries…
Once again, it took valuable time for law enforces to get their bearings and chose purposeful tactics to counteract by now heroin expansion. For instance, the “controlled delivery” practice proved its worth: law enforcers from several countries identified whole criminal chains on the territories of the countries to bring them to justice. International cooperation, deep operational work, updated equipment, training of employees, intensive experience exchange and many other things bring results…
This sounds sacrilegious and cynical, but for many years “the heroin umbrella” protected us from other, much more dangerous psychoactive substances such as spices, ecstasy, methamphetamines, all these chemical substances, which are strong enough to cause addiction, irreversible processes in the state of mind and damages to internal organs.
Distribution of drugs by means of newest Internet technologies makes it difficult to catch drug producers and traffickers. In addition, lack of knowledge of how new psychoactive substances change the individual results in late identification of consumers.
At the same time, it is necessary to mention one essential detail: all the changes of the drug scene described above caused troubles generally to law enforcers while nowadays they affect law enforcers as well as narcologists and NGOs providing services to drug addicts.
Recently I witness a situation when doctors said they had no idea what to do with a child whose parents forced him to visit the doctor after spice intoxication: experienced doctors who know how to treat heroin detoxification and follow up did not know what to do in that case. The good thing was that they were brave enough to admit they did not know what to do rather than just to imitate experienced doctors knowing what to do…
NGOs with extensive experience could not offer anything either. Fortunately, a well-known doctor from Ukraine, who had passed all the circles of the narcohell, participated in a workshop here. It was he who advised a detox scheme in a psychiatric hospital, which allowed at least to save the patient’s life …
To some extent, international organizations, including the European Union, which funds, for instance, the Central Asian Drug Action Programme (CADAP), are also intended to fill the gaps in knowledge. Invaluable international experience is generalized and transferred in the framework of CADAP to our drug therapists and representatives of the non-governmental sector.
But obviously this is not enough. So, paraphrasing the known saying “not to stumble at the same hurdle again and again”, I call all parties, the Government, security officers, doctors, specialized non-governmental organizations, to apply tactics ahead of time. It is necessary to reconsider the format and working tactics as soon as possible. Maybe it is necessary to reconsider the structure too and to apply international experience and to urgently start personnel retraining.
Delays are dangerous (Periculum in mora)…
Alexander Zelichenko,
Candidate of science, Director of the Central Asian Centre for Drug Policy, drug control service colonel in resignation.