Smoking blends and poppy seeds take Russia to paranoia

Smoking blends, also known as "spice," have been officially equated to drugs and were placed on the list of banned substances. Their sale is now criminally punishable. President of the organization "No to Alcoholism and Drug Addiction" Oleg Zykov shared his opinion on this measure with Pravda.Ru.

"Smoking blends is a collective term, and the law should be reviewed to understand what it covers. However, if the law mentions only this ambiguous term, it is not clear what was banned. This collective name may mean various substances. Ambiguous prohibition of chemicals sometimes leads to tragic results. As a result of the so-called case of chemists when there was a ban on toluene solvent, the chemical industry of the Russian Federation has suffered. It took great effort to change the attitude towards solvents. There were ridiculous arguments that the best solvent in chemistry was water, so let's ban water and imprison the staff of all water supply facilities for drug trafficking - that argument was heard.

"Spice is a slang name for smoking blends that may include anything. It is unclear what in particular is banned.

"I am closely observing the activities of the Federal Drug Control Service when it comes to banning natural chemicals around us. This is a meaningless trend. Today, many laboratories around the world, including underground ones, have discovered approximately five hundred psychoactive chemicals that are not available on the market yet. Introduction of bans will not solve the problem.

"Today, we finally realized that the only move in the right direction is the formation of the policy of reducing the demand for psychoactive substances. All psychoactive substances are communicating vessels. Often a person starts with one drug and moves to another. We live in a country of the legal drug called alcohol. Hundreds of thousands of deaths in Russia are alcohol-related. Nevertheless, it is a legal drug, and we are trying to reduce the demand for it, knowing that an outright ban will not yield a positive result.   

"This is equally true about the rest of the chemicals. At some point the Federal Drug Control Service was trying to ban nitrous oxide, then cacti containing certain drugs, then some mushrooms - this is nonsense, a complete dead end. First they put away vets, then anesthesiologists.

"We are still dealing with consequences of the poppy seeds crisis. Even Ivanov (Viktor Ivanov - Director of the Federal Service for Control of Drugs - Ed.) admitted that it was ridiculous to buy food poppy instead of growing it in Russia. This happened because the absurd aggression against the substance resulted in the banning of poppy production. At the same time, he is talking about the wonderful development of hemp industry. All this is nonsense and borderline schizophrenia.

"I believe that the story with smoking blends is from the same category. I am deeply convinced that we, as adults, should be seriously thinking of shaping the policy of reducing the demand for drugs, and a key challenge is to reduce aggression in the first place because in our society it is a key word. How to reduce violence in the society? There are countries that have demonstrated a model for violence reduction because their key idea is a reduction of the prison population. The Federal Drug Control Service, on the contrary, wants to put away hundreds of thousands of people for drug use. Now they are banning smoking blends, trying hard to introduce the concept of a user, not a drug addict, not a sick person, but a user. Half of the country is users, and the Federal Drug Control Service is trying to criminalize consumption. Are they going to put half of the country in jail? What would this result in? The more people get out of prison with a criminal mindset, the more violence will be in our society. Violence in any society determines the level of drug addiction. Instead of dividing the concept of violence into pieces (domestic, social, etc.) and understanding how to reduce its level, we are choosing the path of a hysterical, ridiculous ban of the chemical nature around us, while humans are part of this nature." 

Andrei Perepechenkov

Pravda.Ru 

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