Russian Work Camps

From the MT:
"Plan to Send Russian Drug Addicts to Labor Camps Slammed by Experts"

 

The Federal Drug Control Service's proposal to revive Soviet-era work camps in order to treat drug addicts was met with skepticism by leading health researchers and activists, who said Wednesday that the state's insistence in linking addiction with criminality perpetuates inefficient drug control practices.  Viktor Ivanov, head of the Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN), said at a meeting of the State Anti-Drug Committee on Wednesday that nearly one million Russian drug addicts could be reintegrated into society by working in labor camps instead of wasting away in prison, RIA Novosti state news agency reported.  "We haven't created anything since getting rid of the [Soviet-era] 'medicinal work therapy centers,'" RIA Novosti quoted Ivanov as saying. "In a quarter of a century, we have not been able to counter the catastrophic growth of the illegal drug trade and the narcotization of the population." Ivanov said that 400,000 "ordinary" drug addicts — individuals who were not involved in serious drug-related crime — serving prison terms had cost the justice and penitentiary systems more than 500 billion rubles ($100 million) during the last five years.  The federal drug tsar did not offer a timeline for the adoption or implementation of his proposals, nor did he suggest the type of work addicts would do in the labor camps.  Despite having some of the world's most stringent anti-narcotics legislation, Russia is home to more than eight million drug users, according to the FSKN.  Specialists on drug addiction dismissed Ivanov's claim that so-called "medicinal work therapy centers" from the Soviet era — labor camps in which alcoholics and other addicts were kept under Interior Ministry surveillance — would constitute an efficient method for addicts' rehabilitation.  "These centers never reaped results and it's good that they were closed [in 1993]," Oleg Zykov,  head of the Institute of Narcological Health of the Nation, told The Moscow Times. "I don't think the labor centers Ivanov is suggesting will replicate that of the Soviet era, which essentially housed slaves. But I still think this is the wrong approach to Russia's drug problem." Anna Sarang, president of the Andrei Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice, a Moscow-based organization that promotes awareness about drug addiction, said there was "no scientific basis" suggesting that labor could spur addicts' recovery.

 

 

^ It seems that Russia needs some new ideas and maybe some new people to come up with those ideas. They always seem to "solve" their problems - domestically and internationally by using old Soviet tactics. The USSR collapsed because these kind of tactics just don't work overall. They may in the short-term, but not for a positive long-term. Once the Russians and the Russian Government realizes that then maybe they can move away from the past and try new tactics that could really help the country and its people become a modern 21st century nation. ^

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/plan-to-send-russian-drug-addicts-to-labor-camps-slammed-by-experts/519191.html