Russia Scorns Methadone treatment

[Badly Drawn Girl]

MOSCOW — The conference seemed innocuous enough: a Moscow hotel, slide shows and several dozen doctors and specialists gathered to discuss how to treat heroin addiction. But then members of a Kremlin youth group called the Young Guard arrived, crowding the hotel’s entrance and denouncing the participants as criminals and paid agents of the West.

The focus of their outrage was methadone, a drug prescribed by doctors around the world to wean addicts from heroin. A synthetic form of opium, methadone is central to a therapy endorsed by the United Nations (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and 55 countries, including the United States.


But not Russia (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/russiaandtheformersovietunion/index.html?inline=nyt-geo). Though heroin abuse (http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/drug-abuse/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier) is widely linked to the country’s H.I.V. (http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/aids/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier) epidemic and the spread of criminality, the issue of methadone treatment is all but taboo here.



Full article here:


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/health/22meth.html?ref=world

[nick]

Yeah,the Russians have this backward nationalistic attitude to social policy.It's not a good place to be a "deviant."

Plus the Russian aids rate went past the "tipping point"(the point it becomes so endemic it effects the economy) sometime ago.

[Saint]

God I hate ignorance.. so many lives are going down the drain because of some stupid igorant idiots

[underide]

Strangely enough there was a period of time a few years ago when methadone was manufactured illegally in St. Petersburgh and Moscow.
Apparently it was rather popular on the black market with the junkies injecting that powder. 'Done was actually rather popular there from what i gather.

There was a pretty interesting article on the illicit methadone use in St. Petersburgh, but i can't seem to find it anymore.
There's a short reference to that period of time on the DEA page, though:

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/programs/forensicsci/microgram/mg1004/mg1004.html

"VERY LARGE METHADONE LABORATORY SEIZED
NEAR ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
The Organized Crime Control Section of the St. Petersburg (Russia) Police recently seized a clandestine methadone production laboratory in the Kirov District (located east-southeast of St. Petersburg). The seizure culminated a long term investigation of illicit methadone trafficking and abuse in the St. Petersburg area. The total amount of methadone seized was 18.7 kilograms, by far the largest ever seizure of methdone in Russia. According to the local authorities, the methadone had a street value of between four and four and a half million (U.S.) dollars. Three suspects were arrested (further details unavailable)."


I think clandestine manufacture of 'done probably only adds fuel to the Russian governments' propaganda against using methadone for MMT.
It's certainly a sad state of affairs.
It can be rather shit being an addict in Russia. They get long sentences for personal possession of drugs and overall it's not just the authorities that persecute the drug users.
There are actually vigilante groups that target drugusers (as well as homosexuals) and use a lot of violence as their tactics. I think there have been addicts killed by such groups simply for being addicts.

[Badly Drawn Girl]

God I hate ignorance.. so many lives are going down the drain because of some stupid igorant idiots

The thing that never makes sense to me is when people are up in arms about methadone clinics being established in their cities because they think it will bring in "undesirables" and their crime rate will skyrocket. As if there aren't any junkies living in their cities in the first place?? I'm amazed at how many people have their heads so far up their asses. They don't realize that a clinic may actually lower the crime rate. I've been doing a lot of research since I started on mmt and the ignorance is astounding. I wish I could videotape the people who dose at my clinic and show these assholes online who think we are all homeless and dirty. I could also videotape the people shopping at the local supermarket and you'd never be able to pick out which group was the "junkies." WE are the same people shopping at the supermarket, cutting our grass, walking our dogs, playing catch with our kids in their neighborhoods. Sorry, I'm starting to go off on a rant...:p

[Saint]

My thoughts exactly BDG!
Good rant ;-)

[Consumed.]

Only if they could run their economy like they play chess.