Head of the Federal Drug Control Service: there are 8.5 million drug addicts in Russia

About 8.5 million people in Russia use drugs, said the head of the State Drug Control Agency, Viktor Ivanov. According to the State Statistics Committee, as of January 1, 2013, the country's population is 143,369,806 people.

“Every fifth criminal case considered by the courts of the Russian Federation in 2012 is related to drugs, and in some regions the number of such criminal cases reaches 40%,” Interfax quotes Ivanov, who spoke at a meeting-seminar of the chairmen of the courts of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation on Tuesday, February 19.

Every year, law enforcement agencies initiate and investigate hundreds of thousands of cases of drug trafficking, and courts pronounce over 100 thousand convictions a year, but there are still many drug addicts in Russia, says the head of the Federal Drug Control Service.

According to monitoring of the drug situation in Russia in 2012, about 8.5 million people use drugs with varying degrees of regularity, which account for up to 80% of all street crime in the country, forming a market for demand for drugs and the infrastructure for their sale, Ivanov believes.

“It is no coincidence that the majority of petty street thefts and robberies are committed by drug users. And you, as judges, know this well. In fact, drug addiction has become a system-forming element of crime in the country,” said the head of the Federal Drug Control Service.

Interfax