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| Photo: Russia Beyond The Headlines |
| Russian Drug Czar Viktor Ivanov: Calls for legalization are “a propaganda campaign promoting the use of narcotics” |
The head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service on Friday criticized this week’s call for legalizing marijuana as “a propaganda campaign promoting the use of narcotics.”
Drug Czar Viktor Ivanov was responding to a 24-page report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which
suggested on Thursday that governments should consider legalizing some drugs such as marijuana to curb global drug trafficking, since the decades-old “global war on drugs has failed.”
“We have to realize that we are dealing with a global propaganda of illicit drugs here,” Ivanov claimed, reports
RIA Novosti.
“This propaganda campaign is linked to the huge profits [from sales of illicit drugs]that are estimated at about $800 billion annually,” he said.
Ivanov claimed that Russia had already gone through what he called the “sad” experience of temporarily legalizing drugs containing codeine, an opiate used for its painkilling, anti-cough, and anti-diarrheal properties.
Ivanov said Russians annually consume about six metric tons of codeine, which he said has “essentially has the same properties as heroin.” He claimed the demand for codeine is growing exponentially.
