Concerning the "effectiveness" of forced treatment, it seems everything possible has been said from a medical point of view. Physicians do not support these measures, but politicians seeking to retain severe prohibitive conditions are seeking cheap popularity far from the medical reality.

On the same day in which news stories focused on the "fight against narcotics", another, much more important story was neglected. The FSKN reluctantly confirmed another fact: about 100 thousand people die from overdoses of narcotics in our country every year.

Overdoses of narcotics should be understood almost exclusively to mean overdoses of heroin and other opiates introduced intravenously. No lethal outcomes are connected with the use of the thus far even more exotic (in our country) cocaine or relatively harmless marijuana, the use of which have resulted in no fatal cases so far. Overdose occurs when the percentage of the content of clean substance in a mixture, purchased "on the street" from an illegal dealer, is not the percentage which the drug-dependent patient calculated. Overdose is possible exclusively in "street" narcotics, where no one guarantees the quality and percentages of clean substances.

100 thousand deaths per year from overdose of narcotics is a considerably greater mortality rate than from all road-transport incidents (about 30 thousand cases per year) and intentional murders (approximately the same amount). This means that every 13 minutes one person in Russia dies from an overdose of narcotics, almost 300 people a day.

In Holland, with a population of 16 million, approximately 40 people per year die from overdosing on narcotics (primarily heroin). The number of drug-dependent users of heroin in Holland is small, approximately 25-29 thousand people. This has been achieved as a result of the separation of markets into legal marijuana and illegal "heavy" narcotics.

In Germany, with a population of 82 million, deaths from the overdose, in contrast to Russia, have steadily decreased: in 2000 there were 2023 registered cases, in 2001 there were 1835, and in 2002 there were 1397. In these two countries, substitute therapy is widely adopted for treating drug-dependent patients. The essence of this medical method is simple: instead of illegal "street" narcotics, patients obtain "legal" narcotics of guaranteed quality, produced under sterile conditions, under medical control, and as a component of a general course of treatment for drug dependence.

The World Health Organization (WHO), the administration of the United Nations Program on Narcotics and Crime, the United Nations HIV/AIDS program (UNAIDS) have a united position: "substitute supporting therapy is an effective, safe, and economically justified method of treating opioid dependence". Moreover, both countries mentioned previously (as well as Great Britain, Spain, Canada, Australia, and others.) widely use the "Swiss model" of substitute therapy: the controlled designation of medical heroin instead of methadone therapy, which though it has proven to be comparatively ineffective, is practiced practically everywhere, including China and in the USA, those citadels of the "war against narcotics". By the way, even in the USA, mortality from overdose is on the order of 25 thousand people per year Taking into account the difference in population, that’s eight times less than in Russia.

In our country there is no substitute therapy. None. Neither methadone nor heroine. It is directly and unequivocally forbidden by 1998 federal law "On Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances", Article 31 of which says: "1. Narcotic drugs and the psychotropic substances on lists II and III can be used for medical purposes ". Both heroin and methadone are on list I. “

Then chairman of the Duma committee on the health protection, Deputy Nikolai Gerasimenko, did not hide his happiness after the adoption of the law, emphasizing that from now on in Russia, conversations about substitute therapy would be over. And it is over. But at the same time, tens of thousands of inhabitants of Russia are perishing yearly. It can only be surmised who lobbied to have this standard written into the narcotics laws, in whose interests it would be to block attempts to pull patients with addictions from the tenacious claws of the drug mafia by creating as an alternative possibility to obtain narcotics in a medical office, rather than from a dealer. The results are obvious. Russia is the only developed country in the world, where there are no programs of substitute therapy for patients with addiction.

Elected officials who periodically rant about drops in population in Russia, could save one hundred thousand human lives per year by one stroke of the pen, by one push of the knob in voting in the Okhotny Ryad, by one political solution. They could introduce corrections into the federal law "On Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances", removing standards which forbid the introduction in Russia of substitute therapy programs. Especially as these standards contradict the position of the UN and the World Health Organization.

With all the concern about compatriots abroad, why not to care about compatriots inside the country? But 300 people will die even before this article will become "yesterday's news".