Russia’s narcotics control chief has slammed an international drug policy report as propaganda of drug abuse and accused its authors of lobbying the interests of narcotics mafia.
“We have to realise that we are dealing with global propaganda of illicit drugs here,” Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov said commenting on a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
The report, released on Thursday, said the global war on narcotics was a failure and recommended that governments decriminalise drug use and give addicts access to some drugs, especially marijuana, to undercut organised crime.
Mr. Ivanov hinted that former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who leads the Commission, could have links with international drug cartels. He recalled that drugs production in Afghanistan had increased threefold when Mr. Annan was the U.N. head.
“This propaganda campaign is linked to the huge profits [from sales of illicit drugs] that are estimated at about $800 billion annually,” Mr. Ivanov told reporters on Friday.
The Russian anti-narcotics chief said he had discussed the report with his U.S. counterpart, Gil Kerlikowske, and they two agreed that the Global Commission on Drug Policy had drawn “unacceptable” conclusions.
The commission said that countries that rely on repression when dealing with users of injectable drugs, such as Russia and Thailand, end up with high rates of HIV transmission.
