aimed at reducing the demand for narcotics.

Measures to Train Personnel:

One should bear in mind that in most cases, the first contact with drug

addicts, that is with seriously ill people, is made by the officers of law

enforcement (police) agencies who have neither practical nor psychological

skills of dealing with ill persons. But even a physician is required

alongside professional knowledge, to display ethical norms, which quite

often are crucial for the recovery of mentally imbalanced patients. For

this reason, it is especially urgent and important to draw up teaching

aides and methodological recommendations for law- enforcement agencies, not

only on the tactics but also on the ethics of dealing with drug addicts,

especially young ones. It is necessary to put the experience, gained by the

police in anti-drug addiction prophylactic actions, into practice as soon

as possible.

Polish scientists identify three groups of young drug addicts: 1) those

who can but do not want to stop using drugs; 2) those who would like to

give up drugs but cannot do so on their own; 3) and those who do not want

and can not drop the ruinous dependence.

The principles of treating representatives of each of these groups

differ considerably. The experience of drug addicts' treatment shows that

two opposite trends dominate in the systems accepted up to date. The first

prefers tolerance, partnership, and medical treatment, excluding coercion

and punishment. The second envisages tough regimentation toward drug

addicts. However, there is one requirement that is common for both systems

- indispensable compliance with the principle of voluntary consent.

There are several varieties of pedagogics as industrial, military,

agricultural, and medical. The latter, also called orthopedagogics, deals

with upbringing children with defects. In the field of criminological

prophylaxis, essential is the role of resocialization, i.e. of the

educational effect on persons, poorly adapted to life in society. According

to the criminological literature, "the basic goal in penitentiaries, is to

create conditions for the social adaptation of persons after their prison

term is over.» All these sources of knowledge should be made instrumental

in combating drug abuse.

At the government level, interdepartmental programs involving a wide

range of experts and the media should be worked out and implemented on

educational and prophylactic campaign among the population.

Foreign Experience in Prophylactics:

Foreign experience deserves attention in this respect. Poland, for one,

attaches great significance to public anti-drug addiction campaigns.

Specialists are convinced that drug abuse should be addressed by the public

organizations and individuals, among them - well known scientists, artists,

writers, and clerics.

The catholic church plays a special role. Maximilian Conbeg's Society

has all parishes offered to its program of temperance, urging them to

abstain not only from drugs but also from all unnatural desires. The

program has been backed across the board. Each diocese has priests

specially trained to render professional aid to drug addicts and to help

them return to society.

The Catholic University offers a course of lectures, which are to help

drug addicts; the newly organized Drug Prevention Society has basic

activities coinciding with that of the government and its main tasks are to

treat drug addicts, return them to society and prevent drug-related crimes.

The Society provides therapy for drug afflicted persons, and

recommendations on how to regain the healthy way of life. The Polish

Psychiatrists' Society has an anti-drug addiction commission, pursuing

mainly scientific objectives.

The Monar youth movement immensely contributes to the anti-drug

campaign sparing no effort to return drug addicts to society by interacting

with medics. Religious and public organizations are actively involved in

anti-narcotics campaigns in other countries, too.

At the same time, it is only within the framework of a government-

sponsored program that all issues, pertaining to the destruction of drug-

bearing crops, must be addressed. For that it is necessary to create

independent agencies, furnished with advanced equipment, aircraft, motor

vehicles and other means. Such agencies can be allowed appropriate

functions only after clearance by a team of ecological experts. Here in,

strict criminal responsibility must be enforced for carrying out such

actions that destroy the environment and harm flora and fauna. There must

be compensation.

The solution of this issue depends upon the possibility of deploying

the armed forces. In the USA the army plays a key role in monitoring drug

trafficking routes. The Defense Department carries out the following

measures against criminal narco-business:

- searching for drug-bearing crops, secret laboratories, storages and

drug distribution points;

- discovering and destroying sources of producing drugs (cocaine,

marijuana, etc);

- putting under control all possible routes of smuggling drugs into the

country (by sea, by air, across land border);

- assisting state law-enforcement agencies in exposing the channels of

drug proliferation by using intelligence sensors and photo equipment in

border territories;

- coordinating operations to intercept ships and aircraft, suspected of

illegal drugs shipment;

- patrolling the coast by interceptor planes, ships, posting radars,

balloon systems to monitor low-flying objects, etc.;

- measures to get enlisted and non-enlisted army personnel cut drugs

consumption.

In 1990, the military, using search equipment, capable of locating

submerged cables and pipelines, discovered an underground tunnel at the

border with Mexico, a tunnel through which huge consignments of drugs were

smuggled into the USA. In the last few years, four anti-narcotics

techniques have been in focus: computerized systems, advanced means of

communication, field laboratory analyzers, remote chemical detectors (photo-

acoustic and laser spectroscopes for locating specific drug production

sites.) Experts regard as promising instruments for checking baggage and

cargo containers. These instruments operate on nonlinear radar principles.

Organization of Comprehensive Studies:

By combining the efforts of scientists and experts it would be possible

to avoid haste with setting up new creative teams and, instead, apply to

the database for information, learn its source and its author, and decide

whether it's simpler to use it rather than carry out studies anew. Such an

approach would be quite beneficial for those whose work has so far been

wasted and for those who urgently need scientific information.

This would also speed up the process of solving a number of drug

problems by cutting the time for scientific research and decreasing

inevitable material costs.

Functions of the Head Branch of the Anti-narcotics Agency:

Changes in the given situation call for an appropriate effective

response, a revision of the content and volume of work, correction of

functions carried out at the departmental level.

Particularly responsible is the role of the head branch of the agency

integrated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs which studies, analyzes,

sums up and monitors information on narcotics in the country, informs

appropriate institutions and departments about it, sets priorities in

actions against narcotics, adopts measures to attain them, and carries out

other managerial functions. This agency also arranges and takes part in

concrete anti-narcotics campaigns. These include measures to prevent the

illegal growth of drug-bearing crops (plan, organize, and carry out POPPY

operations, etc.); to curb theft of drugs and highly effective medicinal

substances; discover underground laboratories (develop, plan and carry out

Doping operations); uncover the most sophisticated crimes (by taking direct

part in investigative and search actions upon arrival on site, providing

methodological, informational and technical aid); expose persons and

criminal gangs with inter-regional and international narco-business links;

join other services in carrying out preventive operations at airports,

railway stations, customs offices to detain criminals, check the baggage,

eliminate drug trafficking channels; upgrade work toward preventing and

exposing drug-related crimes.

The volume of applicable law measures at this level bears a selective

nature, being many inferiors to the volume of managerial and other

functions. It would be more rational and effective however to rid these

branches completely of any forms of direct involvement in preventing,

exposing, and curbing crimes and thereby extend managerial functions by

raising demands for professional leadership and service management by

augmenting the staff functions of these branches and limiting their role in

exposing and curbing crimes to appropriate qualified essential methods and

effective control.

Perfecting Internal Affairs Ministry Work:

To make law-enforcement agencies anti-drug trafficking activity more

efficient, the Internal Affairs Ministry could:

- draft comprehensive anti-drug addiction programs;

- perfect the departmental normative basis, create methods and analysis

teaching aids and video-films;

- participate in the work to bring republican anti-narcotics

legislation in line with the international acts;

- create a normative-legal basis to ensure a mechanism for bilateral

and multilateral international cooperation;

- work out, create, and introduce in day-to-day activity a mechanism of

control over the emerging narcotic situation and coordinate reaction to its

changes;

- adopt measures to provide the branches with appropriate equipment and

special devices;

- create automated information-search systems with wide-ranging

possibilities to combat criminal narco-business;

- set out short and long term guidelines;

- determine resources for the target-oriented organizational,

informative, promptly investigative and material-technical support of areas

with widespread drug abuse and rampant crime;

- control the formation of local branches and their activities;

- organize interaction between law-enforcement (police) agencies,

serving at areas where drugs are grown, trafficked, and consumed;

- coordinate various branches' activity to carry out joint measures

toward exposing criminal gangs with inter-regional contacts and carrying

out prophylactic measures on air, sea, river, and auto transport;

- form computer data banks on drug trafficking at republican and

international levels;

- follow the USA and other countries' experience in setting up special

mobile units, armed with the most advanced military hardware and teach

methods and ecologically safe technologies of drug crops' destruction;

- promote law-enforcement (police) agencies' cooperation with customs,

national security agencies, army and border troops;

- educate territorial agencies on various methods of work;

- plan cooperation with foreign agencies in preventing drugs and raw

material for narcotics from being smuggled in from other regions practicing

a specific form of controllable supplies envisaged by the 1988 UN

Convention and exert control over such cooperation;

- organize and control scientific research and apply it;

- to study, sum up, and apply positive foreign experience;

One should bear in mind that the campaign against narcotics is part of

the universal action against organized crime. Efficiency at the local level

makes it possible to expose not only drug-related crimes but also felonies,

especially those involving violence and theft.

If all these organizational measures are put into practice, the

campaign against narcotics in the Russian Federation will be more

effective.

Conclusion

The international community sees narcotics as one of the most dangerous

social evils. International legal acts, as well as national legislations,

including that of the Russian Federation, contain numerous norms regulating

actions against narcotics bound to suppress and prevent it. Moves are made

to perfect and update these norms so that they could counteract new forms

and methods of committing drug-related crimes. Naturally enough, legal

regulations trail after criminal thought in these and other criminal

offenses.

To narrow the gap between the rapid advancement of criminal know-how

and the introduction of the new anti-crime legislation there is a need to

monitor the spread of narcotics, assess it, watch its dynamics, forecast

its progress and carry out appropriate research. Monitoring and research

are to help pinpoint the sensitive spots of drug abuse and work out new

legal norms and methods for dealing with them.

Highly important are the application of legal norms and the planning of

various measures aiming to oppose narcotics.

Private business has been made legal in the new social and economic

conditions. Under the guise of legally established private enterprises

underground drug manufacturing laboratories and drug trade hideouts

(houses, apartments) have begun functioning as unofficial operational

reports confirm. Illegal efforts to produce and sell drugs and the tendency

for their proliferation demand emergency antidrug legislation. Illegally-

operating drug-producing and drug-selling companies present a much bigger

threat to society than all other drug-related ventures do, now that they

(a) spread new varieties of and increasingly more hazardous drugs, (b)

increase, drug production and sales manifold, (c) promote an organized

system of narcobusiness and, consequently, the takeover of drug-trafficking

by organized criminal groups, (d) take monopoly control of drug-trafficking

and reap super-profits in this field, (e) take drug-trafficking operations

beyond the national borders and make use of their foreign connections for

the acquisition, manufacture, transportation, sending, smuggling and sale

of drugs. Their activities prompt many related crimes.

All this calls for moves to update the Russian Criminal Code with

articles on legal responsibility for the production and sale of drugs which

must be considered to belong to the categories of serious and most serious

criminal offenses punishable by ten to fifteen years of imprisonment and

the confiscation of property.

The climatic conditions on the territory of Russian Federation favor

the natural growth and cultivation of drug-bearing plants, which may be, or

are already, used for the purpose of drug production. This calls for the

need to constantly perfect methods of exposing and destroying such plants,

both those that are wild and those that are raised, which, in turn, calls

for a wide range of financial and organizational efforts.

Its geographic and geopolitical position makes the Russian Federation a

convenient trans-shipment point on the road from Asia to other former

Soviet republics and on to Europe. The Russian government, its law-

enforcement agencies, in particular, must, as a result, check illegal

attempts to take drugs across the national border, bolster up its customs

services and see to it that they upgrade their performance and work in

close cooperation with the territorial and traffic police and other

agencies expected to carry out programs of action against narcotics.

The newly gained independence requires that the Russian Federation

confront two problems directly related to narcotics and efforts to overcome

it.

First of all, borders between Russia and other former Soviet republics

show the highest degree of transparency, i.e. border-crossing presents

almost no problem. Given the geographic and geopolitical position of

Russia, the transparency of the national border aggravates the problem of

drug smuggling and calls for the need to essentially fortify the border and

better customs control along it.

Secondly, there is the problem of international relations in the field

of narcotics and international efforts to deal with it. There are two

angles to this second problem. Now that it has gained sovereignty, Russia

has to assume upon itself the functions of establishing and maintaining

international relations, especially since it represents a sort of a link in

the chain that ties drug- producers and drug-consuming regions together.

The second angle of this problem lies in the fact that once being a

part of the Soviet Union, Russian Federation neither faced nor could

possibly face obstacles concerning the jurisdiction of its anti-crime

effort, including crimes committed on territories of different Soviet

republics. Now that they are sovereign nations, the former Soviet republics

have national borders, which, transparent as they are, make legal action

against criminal elements possible only in the context of international

relations and in keeping with international agreements. This, naturally,

complicates the timely launching of operational and investigative actions

aimed at solving criminal cases including those of drug-trafficking.

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