Russia, science, and the global war on drugs

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Russia, science, and the global war on drugs

25 April 2016
Daniel Wolfe

The excesses of the global war on drugs are often so brutal as to seem like parody: think of Singapore’s macabre antidrug illustrations for children, or the recent news that Iran had executed all the men in a single village in the name of drug control. Latest in the ominous, believe-it-or-not category was watching Russia host a side event on science at the UN General Assembly Special Session on the world drug problem in New York on April 20. To informed observers, this was akin to watching climate change denialists host a look at global warming.

Russia has been among the nations most committed to denying scientific evidence on effective drug dependence treatment. The country has banned methadone and buprenorphine, widely researched medicines that the World Health Organization deems essential in the treatment of dependence on heroin and other opiates. Russian “narcology” — the sub-discipline of psychiatry charged with treating drug dependence — has instead promoted such approaches as “coding,” where patients are hypnotized and told that they will fatally poison themselves if they use alcohol or drugs, or induction of comas in drug-dependent patients followed by administration of electroconvulsive shock. St. Petersburg scientists piloted an approach — adapted and practiced in China — that involves drilling holes in the skull and destroying portions of the brain thought to be associated with craving. This “neurosurgery” is irreversible, and has raised the same ethical questions as lobotomies performed on mentally ill patients in the Europe and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Thumbnail: Flickr Un Bolshakov

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