Human Rights Violations and Russian Drug "Treatment"

"Recently, this opposition to science and human rights reached a new frontier. In 2010, Russia’s Chief Narcologist announced his endeavor to create a four-level system of “social pressure” in order to respond to the country’s “drug problem” [26]. The first level of this system involves “early detection” of drug use by way of school and workplace testing; the second level is voluntary drug treatment; the third level is compulsory treatment by referral from the criminal justice system; and the fourth level is compulsory treatment within the criminal justice system. By 2013, this system was fully implemented as state policy. Despite the fact that compulsory drug treatment was proclaimed unconstitutional in Russia in 1989, the punitive principles underlying Russia’s current drug policy allowed for widespread ignorance of this fact—not an unusual practice in Russia [27]. Correspondingly, in 2013–2014, several federal laws and regulations were amended to establish compulsory drug treatment [28–30], purportedly to motivate DDP and people who use illegal drugs to undergo medical treatment and rehabilitation [31]. For example, these amendments empower law enforcement agencies to coerce PWUD to undergo drug treatment and rehabilitation, empower courts to issue drug treatment orders to people who commit drug-related administrative offenses (such as non-medical use of narcotic drugs or possession of insignificant amounts of narcotic drugs) or to DDP who commit minor crimes (such as theft or the possession of significant amounts of drugs for personal use), introduce administrative punishment of up to 30 days of imprisonment for evasion of court-imposed drug treatment or rehabilitation, and require drug treatment and rehabilitation organizations to report to police those patients who do not fulfill court-imposed treatment or rehabilitation orders."