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Drug Abuse in Eastern Europe: An Emerging Issue of Public Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

John M. Kramer
John M. Kramer*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and International Affairs at Mary Washington College
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Extract

Communist governments have traditionally contended that "negative" phenomena, including drug abuse, were alien to socialism and could flourish only within the exploitation, moral depravity, and spiritual vacuousness of capitalism. Recent accounts in official media of Eastern Europe–often employing lurid and perhaps hyperbolic language–now admit that the New Socialist Man can, like his capitalist counterpart, become a victim of what the media themselves often call "narcomania."1 Regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the U.S.S.R., and Yugoslavia, to varying degrees, are willing to acknowledge the existence of drug abuse in their societies. A Soviet source explains why: "Concealing an illness will not make it go away; it will only drive it inward. We have come to realize that openness is needed in the struggle against drug addiction; that we must look the truth in the eye, no matter how unsavory it is.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 19 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1990

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References

1. Little has been published in English about drug abuse in Eastern Europe. One exception is David Powell, “Drug Abuse in Communist Europe,” Problems of Communism, July-August, 1972, 31-40. For a recent study of drug abuse in the Soviet Union, see John M. Kramer, “Drug Abuse in the U.S.S.R.,” Problems of Communism, March-April 1988, 28-40. The present study covers Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. Excluded from the study, because of the paucity of reliable data on drug abuse in these countries, are Albania, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Romania.

2. Bakinskii rabochii (Baku), 26 August 1986.

3. Warsaw Television Service, 28 May 1985, in Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) East Europe Report : Political Sociological and Military Affairs, no. 75, 15 July 1985, 69 [hereafter EPS].

4. Quoted in The Washington Post, 11 August 1986.

5. For an extended discussion of this issue, see Second Report of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drag Abuse, Drug Use in America : Problem in Perspective (Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, 1973), 121-140.

6. Narcotics medically are defined as central nervous system depressants with analgesic and sedative properties. Under United States law, narcotics are considered to be addictive drugs that produce physical and psychological dependence and include opium and its derivatives, heroin, morphine, codeine, and several synthetic substances that can produce morphine-type addiction. Hashish and marijuana would be excluded by the definition of narcotics. Robert O'Brien and Sidney Cohen, eds., The Encyclopedia of Drug Abuse (New York : Facts on File, 1984), 183.

7. In contrast, Powell, “Drug Abuse in Communist Europe,” 40, has found drug abuse concentrated among the progeny of the urban middle and higher classes.

8. The quotation is from Rude pravo (Prague), 24 June 1987, in JPRS-Eks/ Europe Report (EER), no. 134, 3 September 1987, 10. The press conference can be found in ibid., 8 October 1987, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FB1S)-Eastern Europe (EEU), 16 October 1987, 27.

9. Data on registered drug addicts and on drug use from, Mlada fronta (Prague), 2 June 1988, in FBIS-EE (/, 7 June 1988, 13; Rude pravo, 8 October 1987. According to the dissident group Charter 77, the Ministry of Health issued a decree in 1987 banning the publication of comprehensive data regarding drug abuse in Czechoslovakia. See Radio Free Europe (RFE) Situation Report (Czechoslovakia), no. 2, 6 February 1984, for details.

10. The official report is reproduced in Charter 77, Document No. 42/83, 30 December 1983. For a detailed discussion of the report and its contents, see RFE Situation Report (Czechoslovakia), No. 2, 6 February 1984.

11. Sotsialisticka zakannost (Prague), No. 7, 1983 cited in RFE Situation Report (Czechoslovakia), No. 2, 6 February 1984.

12. Svobodne slovo (Prague), 11 February 1986, in JPRS-EE/?, No. 55, 10 April 1986, 99. The remarks of the minister of national defense are reported in Rude pravo, 16 March 1987, in JPRS-EER, No. 69, 4 May 1987, 54. The increasing youth of drug users is reported in Vecernik (Bratislava), 26 February 1986, in JPRS-EER, No. 51, 4 April 1986, 86.

13. Vecerni Praha, 30 October 1986, in FBIS-EEC/, 14 November 1986, D8.

14. Nepszabadsag (Budapest), 10 October 1985, in FBIS-EEC/, 21 October 1985, F5.

15. Heti Vilaggazdasag (Budapest), 6 September 1986, cited in RFE Situation Report (Hungary), No. 2, 25 February 1987; Magyar Hirlap, 30 January 1987, in JPRS-EER, No. 39, 16 March 1987, 115.

16. Ibid., 2 October 1987, in FBIS-EEC, 8 October 1987, 32. Radio Budapest (Budapest), 12 June 1986, cited in RFE Situation Report (Hungary), No. 2, 25 February 1987. Magyar TaviratiIroda (Budapest), 16 July 1986, in JPRS-EER, No. 119, 7 August 1986, 74. Estimates of drug-related deaths in the Hungarian media from Nepszabadsag, 16 June 1984, and Budapest Television Service, 24 January 1985, are cited in RFE Situation Report (Hungary), No. 13, 6 December 1985. The western estimate of drug-related deaths in 1984 is from RFE Background Report (Eastern Europe), No. I l l , 13 August 1986.

17. The assessment of the samizdat source is in Vacat (Warsaw), No. 27, April 1985 in RFE Background Report (Polish Underground Extracts), No. 1, 17 January 1986. Data on addiction to “hard” drugs is from Glospomorza (Koszalin), 17 January 1987, in JPRS-EER, 27 May 1987, 108.

18. The Warsaw University data were presented at an international conference in Amsterdam as reported in the Manchester Guardian (England), 11 February 1980. H. Tobolska, “Problems of Drug Abuse and Preventive Measures in Poland,” Bulletin on Narcotics, January-June 1986, 100; Polska Agencja Prasowa (Warsaw), 3 November 1986, in FBIS-EEC, 4 November 1986, G9. Znaki czasu (Paris), No. 3, 1986 in JPRS-EER, No. 195, 24 December 1986, 90; Trybuna rabotnicza (Katowice), 24 October 1986, in JPRS-EER, No. 28, 26 February 1987, 104.

19. Ibid.

20. On the abuse of drugs among the young, see Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), 10 January 1983, in miS-EEU, 13 January 1983, G5.

21. Warsaw Domestic Service, 14 October 1986, in FBIS-EEU, 15 October 1986, G15. The western estimate of such deaths is from RFE Situation Report (Poland), no. 16, 28 October 1986. Glos Szczecnski (Szxzecin), 28 December 1984, discussed in RFE Situation Report (Poland), 4 April 1985. Material on AIDS is from Gazeta wyborcza (Warsaw), 29 August 1989 in FBIS-EEU, 5 September 1989, 53.

22. Radio Moscow, 4 April 1985, in FBIS-Soviet Union (SOV), 8 April 1985, R3. For evidence that the drug problem was more serious in the 1960s and 1970s than these materials indicate, see Kramer, “Drug Abuse in the U.S.S.R.,” 28-29. Reports on the plenary sessions are carried in lzvestiia, 5 March 1988, and 1 January 1988, and Sovetskaia Rossiia, 26 December 1986. Articles published in the first several issues of Voprosy narkologii have examined both physiological and sociological aspects of the subject.

23. TASS (Moscow), 26 March 1988, in FBIS-SOV, 5 April 1988, 49, provides data on officially registered addicts. Private estimates by Soviet officials were made to representatives of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of State as reported in the Washington Post, 20 July 1988. lzvestiia, 13 May 1987, and Sotsialisticheskaia industriia (Moscow), 16 September 1987, record the use of hashish and opiates.

24. I have elaborated upon this point in “Drug Abuse” in Soviet Social Problems, ed. T. Anthony Jones. Walter Connor, and David Powell (Boulder, Colo. : Westview, forthcoming).

25. RFE Background Report (Eastern Europe), No. I l l , 13 August 1986. The 90 percent figure is found in Narodna armija (Belgrade), 20 September 1984, in FBIS-EEC, 3 October 1984, 17. A recent estimate of the number of addicts is carried by Tanjug (Belgrade), 12 January 1986, in FBIS-EEU, 13 January 1986, 13. The “suspicion” that this number may be more than double the commonly accepted figure is reported in Narodna armija, 20 September 1984. Conditions in Belgrade are described in NIN (Belgrade), 21 November 1982, in FBIS-EEU, 8 December 1982, 111. NIN also describes methadone treatment and addiction in its 24 March 1983 issue cited in RFE Background Report (Eastern Europe), No. III, 13 August 1986. 26. NIN, 5 November 1984, and 11 October 1981, in FBIS-EEU, 3 November 1981, 15.

27. Data on drug-related deaths from Tanjug, 12 January 1986. Data on the same subject for Belgrade from Politika, 3 October 1981, in FBIS-EEU, 3 November 1981, 14. Narodna armija, 20 September 1984, reports that drug-related deaths are probably far higher than these figures indicate.

28. A useful summary of these theories appears in O'Brien and Cohen, eds., Encyclopedia of Drug Abuse, especially 274-279.

29. Among numerous sources that make this argument, see, for example, Izvestiia, 12 August 1986.

30. For typical expositions of the argument regarding family shortcomings, see Mladafronta, 3 April 1984, in FhlS-EEU, 5 April 1984, Dl 1, and Nepszabadsag, 10 October 1985. See Powell, “Drug Abuse in Communist Europe,” 31, for evidence about drugs in certain traditional cultures. Kommunist Tadzhikistana (Dushanbe), 1 August 1986.

31. Rzeczywistosc (Warsaw), 18 July 1982, in FBIS-EEU, 18August 1982, 67. Materials for Czechoslovakia and Poland are from Praca (Bratislava), 12 July 1983, as reported in RFE Situation Report (Czechoslovakia), No. 16, 13 September 1983, and Rzeczywistosc, 5 July 1987, in FBIS-EEU, 22 July 1987, P13. Regarding the anti-alcoholism campaign see Komsomolskaia pravda (Moscow), 8 June 1986. A senior official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs asserts that no definitive data exist to substantiate this argument (Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 August 1986).

32. Charter 77, Document No. 42.

33. A Polish psychiatrist claims, perhaps hyperbolically, that “nowhere is it as easy to buy narcotics as in Poland,” as quoted in Budapest Domestic Service, 14 December 1984, in FBIS-EE£7, 19 December 1984, G7.

34. Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 August 1986; Izvestiia, 6 October 1987; Komsomolskaia pravda, 8 June 1986.

35. Veda a zivot (Prague), No. 8, 1983, discussed in RFE Situation Report (Czechoslovakia), No. 16, 13 September 1983. On these practices, see also Mlada fronta, 2 June 1988.

36. A senior official in the Soviet Union Ministry of Internal Affairs has commented that anyone who does not believe that such practices are prevalent is guilty of “wishful thinking” (Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 August 1986). For the allegation that this trade may even include passenger cars, see Sobesednik (Moscow), No. 40, September 1986, 5.

37. Materials on Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union are from Delo (Ljubljana), 3 March 1984, in FBIS-EE (7, 9 March 1984, 113; Izvestiia, 30 May 1988.

38. Replika (Warsaw), No. 36, April 1985, in RFE Background Report (Polish Underground Extracts), 17 January 1986, and Ogonek, No. 23, 1989.

39. Data from Warsaw Domestic Service, 10 December 1986, in JPRS-E£R, No. 8, 16 January 1987, 119; Izvestiia, 13 May 1987. These sources provide no detailed breakdown of the specific violations subsumed under the rubric “drug-related crime.” Most violations presumably involve the production or distribution of controlled substances or sundry illegal activities—theft, prostitution, the use of forged prescriptions— to acquire money for, or directly obtain, drugs. Materials on the role of organized crime in the drug trade from Moscow Television Service, 19 February 1988, in FBIS-SOV, 26 February 1988, 62; Charter 77, Document No. 42; Delo, 3 March 1984.

40. RFE Situation Report (Poland), No. 6, 4 April 1985, provides a comprehensive summary of the provisions of the new law.

41. The Polish official is quoted in Budapest Domestic Service, 14 December 1984, in FBIS-EEU, 19 December 1984, G7.

42. For a detailed discussion of antidrug legislation in the Soviet Union, see Meditsinskaia gazeta (Moscow), 9 April 1986.

43. For materials on Czechoslovakia, see Rude pravo, 8 October 1987. A detailed commentary on the guidelines issued by the Hungarian supreme court appears in Magyar Hirlap, 20 January 1987, in iPRS-EER, No. 78, 15 May 1987, 46.

44. For discussions of inadequacies in existing drug legislation, see NIN, 21 November 1982, and Rude pravo, 8 October 1987.

45. Pravda, 18 February 1988.

46. Lidova demokracie (Prague), 12 October 1987, in FBIS-EEU, 16 October 1987, 28; Nepszava (Budapest), 2 November 1985, quoted in RFE Situation Report (Hungary), No. 13, 6 December 1985; Mozgo Villag (Budapest), May 1985 in JPRS-EPS, No. 91, 5 September 1985, 60.

47. Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 August 1986; Warsaw Television Service, 28 May 1985; Nepszabadsag, 10 October 1985; Radio Prague, 16 August 1987, quoted in RFE Situation Report (Czechoslovakia), No. 12, 28 August 1987.

48. Vechernaia Moskva (Moscow) as discussed in Agence Francaise Presse (Paris), 22 August 1986, in FBIS-SOV, 22 August 1986, R6; Magyar Tavirati Iroda, 16 July 1986; Kurier Polski (Warsaw), 24 November 1986, in JPRS-EE«, No. 42, 19 March 1987, 148; Pravda, 6 January 1987.

49. Literaturnaia gazeta, 20 August 1986. For details of Hungarian attempts to combat drugs, see Radio Budapest, 29 January 1987, detailed in RFE Situation Report (Hungary), No. 2, 25 February 1987.

50. For further materials on these initiatives, see Kozneveles (Budapest), 3 February 1984, in JPRSEPS, No. 37, 20 March 1984; Magyar TaviratiIroda, 16 July 1986; Uj Tukor (Budapest), 5 February 1984, in JPRS-EPS, No. 37, 20 March 1984, 72.

51. Borba, 1 December 1982; Mlada fronta, 3 April 1984. For materials on the television documentaries, see Izvestiia, 12 August 1986; Komsomolskaia pravda, 8 June 1986. See Uchitelskaia gazeta (Moscow), 15 January 1987, for information on the antidrug pamphlet. The resolution of the Supreme Soviet is reported in Izvestiia, 5 March 1988.

52. Rzeczwistosc, 5 July 1987, provides extensive materials on the activities of the society. At present, the society has approximately 500 members. Rzeczwistosc claims that parents of addicted children are afraid to join the society because of “strong feelings of guilt and shame regarding so-called public opinion. “

53. These activities are detailed in RFE Situation Report (Poland), No. 16, 28 October 1986; Zycie Warszawy, 16-17 May 1987, in JPRS-EER, No. 122, 7 August 1987, 49.

54. See the interview with Kotanski in Kierunki (Warsaw), 11 May 1986, as discussed in RFE Situation Report (Poland), No. 16, 28 October 1986.

55. This campaign is described in RFE Situation Report (Poland), No. 16, 28 October 1986.

56. The accord also permits customs officers from each state to testify in the other's courts in drugrelated cases (Reuters, 12 September 1988). On Soviet interest in concluding a drug trafficking agreement with the United States, see the Washington Post, 20 July 1988. In the opinion of the director of the Drug Enforcement Agency, such an agreement would produce “minimal” benefits for the United States. On 21 February the Washington Post reported on training in the United States of drug enforcement personnel from socialist states. Although a spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs indicates that joining Interpol will not occur “soon” (TASS, 22 April 1988, cited in Radio Liberty, Research Bulletin, No. 77, 22 April 1988).

57. hvestiia, 27 June 1988; TASS, 4 July 1989, in FBIS-SOV, 5 July 1989, 4. Signatories to the protocol also agreed to hold “regular meetings” in the future “on cooperation in the sphere of combatting drug addiction” (hvestiia, 27 June 1988). Albania, the G.D.R., and Romania did not adhere to the protocol.

58. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia (1782), cited in Mencken, H. L., A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles (New York : Knopf, 1946), 223 Google Scholar.