Megan K. Stack has a very sad report in the Los Angeles Times today on the proliferation of heroin use in Russia, which has been dramatically increased from the booming narcotics industry coming out of Afghanistan – another thorn in the U.S.-Russia relations.  As the article shows, many regional governments are woefully unprepared to handle drug addiction epidemics.

“It’s a catastrophe for us. We were completely unprepared for this turn
of events,” says Evgeny Bryun, Moscow’s chief drug addiction
specialist. “We have our own lost generation.”

The transition
from a Soviet state largely free from heroin to a booming nation awash
in the drug has been painful and dark, marked by widespread public
ignorance of the risks and symptoms of addiction, lingering shame and
stigma, and muddled government efforts at treatment.

Methadone,
which is widely used in the West to wean people off heroin, is illegal
in Russia, and rehabilitation programs are unavailable in many parts of
the country. In 2007, Human Rights Watch concluded that the treatment
at state drug clinics was “so poor as to constitute a violation of the
right to health.”

Meanwhile, at private clinics, all manner of
experimental treatments — including shock therapy and the removal of
parts of the brain — are in vogue. In Bryun’s government-run clinic,
addicts take turns sleeping hooked up to machines that send gentle
electrical impulses through their brains, or lying encased in a
full-body relaxation therapy machine.

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