Drug abuse. Tendencies and ways to overcome it

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The training and educational component includes educating specialists in law-enforcement agencies, mass media, narcological centers, and social services.

The research component aims to define and analyze data on drug abuse, to work out recommendations for overcoming it, to set up and run special research labs, and to find new ways of ending drug addiction.

The technical component includes identifying drugs, designing equipment for special labs, developing remote control devices to spot fields of drug-bearing crops.

The medical component of measures is: to promote a system of rehabilitative treatment for drug users; to choose appropriate curative programs; and work on methods to reduce the spread of infectious diseases among drug users.

The economic component consists chiefly in funding various programs and projects, combating drug abuse, supporting programs reducing demand for drugs and their supply, encouraging and supporting populations which had switched to cultivating farm crops on territories where drug-bearing plants had been grown previously.

The financial component involves measures against money laundering. Financial operations by drug moguls aimed at making their earnings legal are the most vulnerable part for the criminals. In view of this, the Committee for Banking Rules and Banking Supervision issued a statement on December 12th, 1988 that calls for preventing criminal uses of the banking system for laundering cash obtained from drug trafficking. It requires that the international banking community use extreme discretion while identifying clients. The statement also calls for more cooperation with judicial systems and police institutions in halting the legalization of cash from drug trafficking. Many countries have accepted that the principles contained in this statement are applicable to the operation of their own financial systems. In keeping with a decision of the G Seven countries and of the European Commission Chairman at the 15th economic summit in Paris in July 1989, a special operational group on financial issues was started. It produced 40 recommendations made public in February 1990. It also analyzed world financial flows, banking and financial systems and methods for laundering cash. The group found some weak spots and undertook a number of other steps. All the countries, who are members of this group and (in keeping with its recommendations) some other countries declared that they viewed participation in laundering cash as a criminal act and started special services to investigate leads on shady deals reported by subunits of the financial system. At the recommendation of the special operational group on finances, the UN International Committee on Drug Control called on all governments to pass and effectively use appropriate legislative acts to stop money laundering, to confiscate the property of drug dealers, and to consider a possibility of lifting the burden of proving the legitimacy of supposed incomes or of other property subject to confiscation under par. 7 of Article 5 of the 1988 Convention even if this may require legal or constitutional amendments.

Among the international law components of measures are those calling for reciprocal legal support of countries working to combat drug trafficking. It is essential to make extradition easier, to strengthen international cooperation against illegal drug trafficking, as well as to promote the international system of control over medicinal drugs and psychotropes.

The preventive measures are comprised of destroying illegal plantations of drug-bearing crops; preventing a transfer of drugs and of their components from the legal sphere to the illegal one; curbing illegal drug trafficking; reducing the demand for drugs; preventing the use of narcotics, particularly, in places of employment, eliminating the addicts' pads, illegal labs where narcotics are made and stores which sell them; promoting social rehabilitation of drug addicts and encouraging education campaigns against drugs.

The control component of measures envisages supervision over the following areas: the growing of drug-bearing plants, to rule out a "leakage" of the legitimately grown plants: illegal sowing and raising; production of narcotics, their acquisition, storage, stocking and dispensing; commercial trade turnover in special equipment used for producing drugs, as well as in raw materials; semi-finished products, chemicals and narcotic analogies; international parcel post deliveries as a vehicle for sending narcotics; ships sailing on the high seas and planes flying in international space; transit through customs' ports; approaches to land, sea and air borders; and deliveries of drugs for treatments at hospitals.

Реферат опубликован: 14/12/2009