Failure of Russian Drug "Treatment"

"Analysis of court statistics demonstrates that the 2013–2014 amendments have not led to the expected outcome of “motivating” PWUD to undergo drug treatment or rehabilitation. Only about 2% of people convicted for drug administrative offenses chose to undergo treatment rather than punishment (about 1500 out of more than 70,000) [32] and only about 1% of 48,557 people who were involuntarily ordered to undergo drug dependence treatment remained drug-free within a year or more after treatment. Publically available judgments indicate that people have either simply not shown up for their appointments with narcologists or failed to visit narcologists after diagnostics (after which narcologists report truant patients to the police) [33]. Despite this obvious ineffectiveness, narcologists continue to express strong support for this system of “social pressure.” In June 2017, the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation sponsored a large conference of narcologists. The conference’s final resolution included recommendations to health institutions in Russia to form a system of social pressure for people who use psychoactive substances, including a mechanism of legal “motivation” for treatment and rehabilitation as an alternative to administrative and criminal liability for people committing drug crimes. The same conference endorsed a bill to be introduced to the Federal Parliament in order to expand the coercive treatment measures of 2013–2014 to “problem alcohol users” [34]."