Russia's War on Drugs

It's not just the US that fights a War on Drugs. Russia too feels the need to mobilize its military and police forces to prevent the use of certain narcotics by its residents.

Like the US, it feels that neighboring countries aren't quite doing enough to prevent its residents from acquiring and using their drug of choice.

"On the international stage, Russia's Afghan heroin issue has become the country's favorite crusade, and has allowed Russia to enter a global debate about Afghanistan that had previously left it on the sidelines. Its basic point is a reasonable one: NATO has fueled drug production by refusing to destroy Afghan poppy fields, which it stopped doing last year in the hope of winning the support of opium farmers. Perhaps less reasonable is Russia's belief that its heroin problem is caused not by its porous borders or its abysmal treatment of addiction (methadone therapy is illegal in Russia) but by NATO's policy on drugs in Afghanistan. Yet that is what Russian officials contend, and this week they embarked on a campaign of coordinated fuming over the issue."

What Russian (and US) officials often fail to take into account is that people denied the use of one foreign-grown drug (heroin) will often turn to another home-grown drug (marijuana, etc.). In fact, attempting to stop people from harming themselves is generally an exercise in futility.

By forcing neighboring countries whose own citizens don't use drugs to fight their war for them, Russian (and US) officials often destabilize local politics and creates a narco-military ruling elite that unsurprisingly makes life much worse for all residents.

The efforts of Russian and US politicians would be much better directed at legalizing and taxing drugs that are used in their country, and directly allocating the new-found tax revenue towards prevention and addiction treatment. In addition, scaling back the military and policy powers from their current futile task of circumventing drug smuggling will also free up a lot of other resources that can be used to pay down debt or reduce the current deficit.