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The low effectiveness of treatment and rehabilitation programmes for persons with addiction to psychoactive substances has been a pretext for introducing into medical practices of the so-called replacement therapy, whose essence is giving these patients this or that drug in order to prevent them from using drugs they get on the illegal market. Following a period of unwarranted “great expectations”, “hopes” and first successes these methods began to be more and more criticised by both physicians and other specialists, and broad public in the countries where such methods began to be used. A detailed analysis of the reasons of giving up wide-range use of this programme can be found in the article “On the issue of “Replacement Therapy” for patients with heroine addiction” by Chief Children’s Narcologist of the RF Ministry of Health A.Nadezhdin.

Rehabilitation or treatment? What is the meaning of the so widely promoted programmes featuring “reduced harm”, and, in particular, the “methadone programme”? Is it a return to the “regular drug doze” or a search for effective treatment methods? All the truth about methadone, the myths created around it and the realities can be found in the analytical article “On methadone, or how it is done and who needs that” by the consultant of the project “No to drugs” psychiatrist narcologist Vladimir Lukyanov.

The issues of prevention of the use of psychoactive substances in organised groups of adolescents are top priority problem of present-day narcology and pedagogics. Currently this type of activities is represented primarily by randomly organised topical lectures by either physicians specialising in psychiatry and narcology, or people from law enforcement agencies. This approach fails to meet basic requirements of preventive activities. It is expedient to place the responsibility of timely ongoing education of students of schools and special secondary educational institutions about hazards of the use of drugs on teachers and school psychologists, as the specialists who are constantly in direct contact with minors. However, realisation of this work has certain difficulties due to inadequate knowledge of the problem by the above-mentioned category of specialists. An attempt has been made to solve this problem in the manual for high school teachers “Prophylactics of the use of toxic and narcotic substances by minors in educational institutions”

While working out corresponding laws on the use of drugs, legislators face a wide range of problems, arising due to a certain specificity of the presence and availability of drugs in the present-day society.
One of the most acute problems faced by the society is that of moral choice of the kind of society we all will be living in in future – whether it will be a drug-free society, or one where drugs are legalised. No matter how strange that may seem, but the constantly recurring debate in the mass media about the need to legalise drugs and Russia’s “lagging behind” the rest of the world in this respect, does nothing but distract public from an objective analysis of the problem. At the same time, the importance of this regarded as one of the problems relating to this country’s national security. Is it possible to thoroughly understand the gist of the problem? Such an attempt is made by B.Maximov, Candidate of Medical Sciences in his article “The absence of prospects of legalisation of drugs in Russia”.

The heroin epidemic, which has broken out in this country over the past decade spells disaster to the life and health of Russia’s citizens. Statistics of the demographic tragedy of a whole generation due to abuse of opiates forced President of the Russian Federation to identify drugs as a “threat to national security”. The frightening shadow of opiates abuse may has blocked our vision of the large-scale use of hemp, which present-day public opinion has more and more definitively been regarding as a “light” and “harmless” intoxicating substance. Narcologist and psycho-analyst Aleksandr Danilin analyses a spate of well-known facts about this drug in his article “The marijuana problem: the evident and the unclear”.

The analytic meeting “Narcomania in Russia:Problems and Forecasts” on September 23,2002 placed on the site “No to drugs” (Meeting minutes).
Editor-in-chief of the site Alexei Kolgashkin opened the meeting, saying: «Good evening. We are here today to hold this analytic meeting on the issue of “Narcomania in Russia. Problems and forecasts”. Allow me to present the participants. Alexei Valentinovich Nadezhdin, Chief Children’s narcologist of the RF Ministry of Health, Boris Fyodorovich Kalachev, Professor of the Russian Interior Ministry University, Andrei Anatolievich Gherish, chief expert of the Education Ministry on narcomania prevention, Igor Vladimirovich Mushastikov, Director of the radio station “Yunost”, and Valry Nikolayevich Losin, an expert of the press-service of the Ministry for the Press, TV and Radio. I think that this meeting will take the shape of a free exchange of opinions on the issue we are all concerned about. And we shall begin with what I perceive as the most acute issue…