An Indication of Russia's Illegitimacy

Russia to ban methadone programs in Crimea.

Russia is one of the worlds most regressive anti health promoters of the satanic-papal drug war, completely against the concept of 'harm reduction', for the sake of protecting markets in Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco and hard alcohol, namely mind-numbing toxic vodka.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2014/mar/26/crimea_opiate_maintenance_crisis

excerpt

Things are about to get harder for opiate users in Crimea, the former Ukrainian province now annexed by Russia. While Ukraine has embraced a harm reduction approach to hard drug use, Russia rejects such an approach and has some of the most repressive drug laws in the world.

Russia does not support efficient programs for preventing HIV and Hepatitis C among its drug using population, and harm reduction measures like needle exchanges and opiate substitution therapy (OST), of which methadone maintenance is a subset, are illegal.

Now, the concrete consequences of Crimea's reincorporation into the ample bosom of Mother Russia are coming home for drug users there. On Wednesday, Russian "drug czar" Viktor Ivanov -- one of 31 allies of Pres. Vladimir Putin sanctioned by the US government this month -- announced that Russia will ban the use of methadone in Crimea. That comes after vows a week before that he would move away from harm reduction practices in general in Crimea.

"Methadone is not a cure," Ivanov claimed. "Practically all methadone supplies in Ukraine were circulating on the secondary market and distributed as a narcotic drug in the absence of proper control. As a result, it spread to the shadow market and traded there at much higher prices. It became a source of criminal incomes," he said.   See also

I have written about Russia's illegitimate, contemptuous to liberty and health drug policies in my blog "Freedom of Medicine and Diet" at the following link:

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/11/cigarette-vodka-czar-ivanov.html