The Andrey Rylkov Foundation has decided to limit access to its website with materials on Russian and international drug policy, health and human rights resources for people who use drugs. We have decided to temporarily shut down our website in light of a new government attack on the organization.

On Thursday, April 16th the major Russian government-owned news channel Rossiya-24 ran a prime-time news piece where they accused the Andrey Rylkov Foundation of distributing ‘narco-propaganda’, a couple of days after the Federal News Agency (RIAFAN) had run an “investigation” with similar accusations. The investigation was prompted by an earlier news piece, “Thousands on methadone withdrawals”, published by opposition outlet Mediazona, where ARF has shared the challenges we face during the COVID-19 crisis providing assistance to people who use drugs. The Mediazona news piece described people who use drugs as one of the most vulnerable populations, especially in Russia, where they don’t have access to effective drug treatments based on globally-recognised science and medicine and instead are forced into painful withdrawals.

The next day, Vasiliy Piskarev, the chair of the State Duma Security Committee, published a statement on the Duma website accusing us of attempting to decriminalize drug use and promoting drugs propaganda, and informs that he had passed this information onto the authorities in order to initiate a new series of check-ups.

Russian NGO accused of “narco-propaganda” over COVID-19 advocacy for people who use drugs

The idea of certain drugs as bad, dangerous and requiring prohibition by law it is a relatively recent social phenomenon, with the first international laws prohibiting drugs only appearing at the start of the twentieth century. Since then, the so-called War on Drugs has become a huge driver for the worlds ever-growing prison population, with more than 1 in 8 of all prisoners currently incarcerated in British prisons serving their sentences for drug offences.

The War on Drugs has also been shown to have a shocking bias regarding racial disproportionality. Black people are recorded as being so over-represented in cannabis prosecutions, making up a quarter of those convicted of cannabis possession, even though they comprise less than 4 percent of the UK’s total population. The picture is even worst in the United States, with black men having been admitted to prison on drugs charges at rates of 20 to 50 times that of white men, despite the fact that there is no discernible discrepancy regarding the use, supply or production of prohibited substances amongst different racialised groups.

Decades of prohibition’s failure to reduce the drug trade – combined with the increasingly negative impacts of growing incarceration, violence and addiction – has led to many finally breaking with the War on Drugs consensus and openly calling for, and eventually implementing, different approaches to the question of hitherto illegal drugs, with major developments in countries such as Uruguay, Canada, Luxembourg, and some states in the US.

Russian NGO accused of “narco-propaganda” over COVID-19 advocacy for people who use drugs

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