Surge in Addiction Linked to Russian Drug Gangs

Drug gangs based in the politically volatile Caucasus Mountains region and the newly independent nations of Central Asia are spreading their tentacles across the former Soviet Union and into Scandinavia, according to Russian and U.N. narcotics officials.

Spurred by last year’s breakup of the Soviet empire, these gangs are blamed for a surge in heroin addiction and marijuana use in Russia and for a dramatic change in the way drugs move into Western Europe from traditional growing areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Russia is hardest hit by the surge in drugs, according to a recent report by an investigation team from the Vienna-based U.N. International Drug Control Program.

More than 1 million Russians are now drug abusers, and there may be as many as 100,000 opium poppy fields and more than 2.5 million acres of marijuana in Russia alone, the report estimates.

Russian officials believe there are now between 5.5 million and 7.5 million drug addicts in all the former Soviet Union--an astonishing increase from the 1.5 million reported in early 1991.

“Drug abuse is dramatically on the rise in Russia,” said Arkady Kuznetsov, chief of the Russian Federation Drug Enforcement Department. “The disintegration of the police as a force only broadens the sweep of the epidemic.”

Russia’s drug-related crime climbed 15% last year, and 23 tons of drugs were confiscated inside the country, Kuznetsov said.

“Russia has no effective protection against the pending disaster, with merely 800 poorly equipped police officers directly involved in countering this crime,” he said.

Rival gangs of Azerbaijanis make up at least 80% of the drug dealers arrested in Moscow, Russian officials say.

Other mobs are controlled by Chechens, natives of a tiny, rebellious Muslim enclave in the Caucasus. A recent shootout in Moscow between rival gangs left more than 10 dead.

Proceeds from illicit drug trafficking in Russia amounted to about $25 million last year, according to the U.N. report.

This figure is tiny compared to the $500-billion-a-year narcotics industry in the United States. But U.N. officials point out that Russian and Central Asian drugs are sold well below world market prices and are considered cheap in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

A kilogram of hashish in Russia costs between $15 and $20, compared to $200 in France or Germany, according to the U.N. report.

Over the last year, police in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, have raided several huge underground drug laboratories, arresting skilled chemists and confiscating sophisticated chemical-manufacturing equipment.

Finnish law enforcement officials say ethnic gangs are responsible for a rise in cheap heroin moving across the well-traveled border between St. Petersburg and Helsinki, Finland.

“Drug users and suppliers were not a big problem in Finland before the breakup of the Soviet Union,” Yrjo Lansipuro, a Finnish Embassy spokesman in Washington, said. “Now, Russian-produced drugs are cheaper and things are on a bigger scale.”

Swedish officials say they are bracing for their own flood of drugs from the former Soviet Union.

While drug abuse in Russia and the other 14 states of the former Soviet Union is still within “reasonable” limits, it is expected to worsen as a result of social and economic pressures, according to the United Nations.

The U.N. report says another cause of increased drug trafficking is across-the-border cooperation among Mafialike conglomerates and the laundering of drug money through hundreds of new banks and businesses with foreign partners. Weakened border controls contribute to the problem.

Some Russian drug traffickers, law enforcement officials say, have strong ties to emigre groups in New York. But a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in Washington said the agency had not seen the U.N. report and refused to comment on a possible “Russian connection.”

The report cites vast opium poppy fields and marijuana plantations in southern Russia, western Ukraine and Azerbaijan and in the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The Uzbek capital of Tashkent, the U.N. investigators say, has become a major international drug capital and a transit stop for drugs moving between the Golden Crescent--the rich poppy-growing region of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran--and Europe and the United States.

Investigators also found that drug gangs are bypassing the Balkan countries, once a favorite way station but now racked by war and civil unrest, in favor of places in the Caucasus.