Meeting of the Heads of the SCO Counternarcotics Agencies

Viktor Ivanov: SCO has objective interest in ensuring regional security

Meeting of the Heads of the SCO Counternarcotics Agencies
Transcript of the remarks addressed to the participants in the Meeting of the Heads of the SCO Counternarcotics Agencies by Director of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov.

Viktor Ivanov: Colleagues, I am pleased to welcome you to the 6th Meeting of the Heads of the SCO Counternarcotics Agencies.

Colleagues, we at the SCO have done much work during the last five years and have established effective cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking.

Working expert groups on controlling precursors, improving the contractual and legal framework for cooperation, reducing the demand for drugs, law enforcement activities, and combating drug-related crime have been working in an active and fruitful way. Meetings of the heads of the SCO counternarcotics agencies have been held regularly.

This is not by accident. We are united in the face of a common threat: the existence of two global drug production centres in Afghanistan and Latin America. The drug aggression they generate is a threat to international security and economic development. This threat promotes corruption and facilitates the funding of terrorism and extremism. It also undermines the health and wellbeing of nations and hampers the implementation of fundamental human rights and freedoms.

The scale of this problem is such as to call for consolidating the world community's efforts, strengthening the existing international drug control system, and promoting practical cooperation between the SCO counternarcotics agencies.

From the practical point of view, the most effective SCO measures are joint operations to fight drug trafficking, exchanges of best practices, anti-drug personnel training, improvement of the legal framework and development of institutional mechanisms for combating the production and distribution of drugs.

At the same time, given the steady rise in Afghan drug production, these efforts have failed to produce the needed effect. I am referring to our goal of cutting short drug deliveries and improving the drug situation in our countries.

The ISAF armed contingent will soon be pulled out of Afghanistan. It goes without saying that the US and NATO intend to maintain strategic positions both on Afghan territory and in the Central Asian Region. At the same time, their policies imply that they are fully reluctant to assume responsibility for solving Afghanistan's massive drug production problem, primarily by restoring its ruined economic infrastructure and reducing its dependence on outside financial injections that currently amount to 90 percent of the GDP.

Simultaneously the NATO states that are leaving Afghanistan clearly intend to shift the onus of maintaining stability and guaranteeing security in Central Asia to regional powers, including Russia, and to international organisations, primarily the SCO and CSTO. If something goes wrong, the Western states' image and reputational losses will be minimal and will not damage their international political status. At the same time, Afghanistan and its neighbours will face numerous problems that have only grown worse over the last decade. Illegal drug trafficking is the most dangerous problem in this context.

Hushing up the real scale of this problem will lead to mistakes in decision-making and to incorrect spending of funds allocated by the international community for assistance to Afghanistan. This results in less efficient work on the current projects, while problems only mount over time.

We believe that the participation of SCO member states could contribute to making the solutions of issues Afghanistan faces today more efficient. SCO countries are objectively interested, first, in providing regional security, and second, in making Afghanistan a stable and sovereign state capable of effectively addressing its domestic issues, including when it comes to combatting drug production and trafficking.

Under these circumstances, we should do all we can to help Afghanistan get rid of the overwhelming drug production problem there. In this respect, colleagues, I believe it is important, on behalf of the ministers, to request that the SCO heads of state confirm Afghanistan as a full-fledged SCO member, in recognition of the importance of integrating it more closely into SCO economic processes in the interest of alternative development and the eradication of drug production.

We believe that curbing drug production, combined with the implementation of comprehensive alternative economic development projects for Afghanistan, will be the most viable and effective method of dealing with the issue of drug trafficking.

Comprehensive alternative development should not be understood as one-off, limited projects to dole out the seeds of legal agricultural crops to Afghan peasants. It is necessary to restore the infrastructure of the complete agricultural cycle - from land tilling to processing and sales. A similar approach should also be applied to industrial development. These principles are reflected in the UN International Guiding Principles on Alternative Development.

Statistics show that the concentration of the world community's efforts to eradicate drug production infrastructure and replace it with profitable alternative development projects will not only require less money than is annually spent on combatting low-level drug trafficking and on the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts, but will also help significantly reduce the drug threat over the course of a few years.

The snowball like growth of various new psychoactive substances, which are not included on international lists of controlled substances, arouses concern. Considering how highly developed chemical science is, it takes a matter of days to develop new formulas for substances with a narcotic effect on humans and to start producing them, while the process of identifying, analysing and banning such substances can drag on for years.

Needless to say, the safety of these substances for human consumption is not checked, so drug users can end up with a substance under a well-known brand that has a serious toxic effect. In Russia, last year, several hundred cases of poisoning with new drugs were registered, many of which were fatal.

This year Russia adopted a law enabling the Federal Drug Control Service to suspend the circulation of new psychoactive substances, which made our efforts to counter this problem more effective. At the same time, criminal groups can take advantage of the differences in our countries' regulations to organise their business and disseminate spices. To prevent this, we are proposing measures to tighten control over new substances appearing on the drug market.

In addition, we are concerned by the growing popularity of the idea of liberalising the existing international drug control regime.

Claiming that the war against drugs in its traditional forms has been lost, liberal drug activists suggest that drug production and drug consumption should not be fought but placed under state oversight. People who want to use drugs will be able to freely acquire, at licensed pharmacies, narcotic and psychotropic substances, bringing the state a profit in the form of licensing, accreditation, excise and tax revenues. At present, they are talking about the legalisation of soft drugs, for example, cannabis, which has already been done in the Netherlands, certain states in the US, Uruguay and some South American countries, but this so-called flexible approach to international and national regulations will in short order lead to the decriminalisation of all types of narcotic and psychotropic substances.

Arguments in favour of liberalising narcotic substances rely on the alcohol and tobacco precedents. However, according to health experts, alcohol consumption (drinking, alcoholism) consistently tops the list of causes of death due to heart attacks, strokes and related conditions, or accidents. Sociological research tells us that alcohol consumption is associated with such issues as domestic violence, family breakdown, erosion of demographic potential, deformation of personality and other negative phenomena that systematically cause irreparable damage to society.

The supporters of drug legalisation not only pass over this scenario, but also overlook the fact that drugs are far more addictive. According to physicians, a drug user's brain chemistry changes irreversibly and the risk of relapse never disappears, even though it can be significantly reduced by special rehabilitation and re-socialisation programmes.

The alleged economic benefits of legalising any drug are also questionable. This logic does not seem to take into account the medium- and long-term consequences, which are likely to entail health and government spending exceeding the potential gains at least five times over.

The Russian Federation consistently supports the ongoing fight against drug trafficking in the framework established by the UN drug control conventions. The emphasis is not on providing a painless existence for drug addicts, but on the basic human right to live in a drug-free environment. The best way to achieve this goal is to curb drug production, which is the root cause of drug trafficking, and compensate the lost revenues from drug cultivation through alternative development programmes.

The Special Session of the UN General Assembly on the World Drug Problem in 2016 is likely to become first platform for a major, open confrontation between these two conceptually different approaches to drug trafficking - traditional and liberal. Its decisions can determine international anti-drug strategies for a long time to come.

At this point, drug liberals are using rhetoric that seems attractive because it promises to immediately generate impressive revenues needed to solve pressing problems amid a global downturn.

However, the SCO member states, which are only too familiar with the potential impacts of loosening drug controls, as was the case in China, where out of control consumption of opium once caused the rapid degradation and decline of the population while benefitting the East India Company's profits, understand the importance of keeping the international anti-drug system in place.

Colleagues, I suggest speaking at the special session with one voice on behalf of the SCO to support eradicating the drug trade, alternative development for drug producing countries and strengthening the traditional drug control system.

Our agencies have prepared relevant initiatives and discussed them with experts and senior officials. I suggest we approve and submit them to our heads of state so that anti-drug issues are reflected in the final document to be adopted at the upcoming Summit in Ufa in July. I ask you to support it.

I also propose we begin working on the new SCO Anti-Drug Strategy for 2017-2022 as soon as possible, so that in 2016, when the SCO Anti-Drug Strategy for 2011-2016 expires, we have a full new version that includes all the decisions taken.

To do this, I suggest we establish a working group to develop the new strategy.
Thank you for your attention.