The Commission on Narcotics of the UN Economic and Social Council and the UN International Committee on Drug Control are permanently functioning international agencies. Various conferences and symposia on actions against drug abuse discussed and worked out conventions, programs, decisions, projects, and recommendations. These can be referred to as temporarily operating organizations. Conferences of member-states, i.e. of their official representatives, have the right to approve conventions and other normative documents subsequently ranked as international law acts. After their ratification, legal norms contained in them become part of national legislation. International bodies exercise all the above-listed measures to combat drug abuse, except for criminal measures and a few others.

Medical institutions have the authority to carry out curative and curative preventive measures.

By their nature, the measures to overcome drug addiction can be divided into suppressive and preventive.

This classification makes it possible to determine the importance of each particular group. It can also serve as the basis for building a system of measures to be used for the preparation and subsequent development of the national program of action to combat drug addiction.

Measures to Overcome Drug Abuse:

By evaluating the measures to overcome drug abuse from the study of the experience, it is possible to single out the following groups of measures: 1) control preventive; 2) research, training and educational; 3) medical; 4) legal; 5) economic and financial, and 6) organizational.

The control and preventive; research, training and educational; economic and financial measures are grouped together because they are closely intertwined. Legal measures in this national program should include law enforcement and law-making measures and organizational measures-informational, analytical, and technical measures.

Without referring to the contents once again it would be important, from the standpoint of their expression and place in this program, to draw attention to some points concerning certain groups of the proposed measures.

A method should be defined in this anti-drug program of applying control measures. It would need to be a legislative regulation of drug movements from the sowing of drug-bearing plants and their cultivation, to the consumption of drugs. Presently, conflicting rules regulating the production, acquisition, storage, stock taking, dispensing, transportation and the sending of narcotics by parcel post are in force. These rules were enacted by executive branch agencies rather than by lawmakers. For example, the rules concerning the production, storage, stock-taking, and dispensing of drugs were established by the orders issued by the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of the Medical and Micro- biological Industry of the former USSR. Transportation rules can be found in orders issued by the Ministry of the Medical Industry and coordinated with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the former USSR. Rules for sending and shipping drugs by rail or any other kind of transport were determined by normative acts of various agencies. On the other hand, even if this is the prerogative of law- makers, the rules are scattered within various and quite numerous normative acts making it difficult to control violations of these rules by law-enforcement agencies. So, if a full and effective control over the circulation of narcotics is to be ensured, uniform rules for handling drugs should be worked out on the basis of the existing rules and should be made into law. These rules should envisage the procedures for the sowing, raising, producing, storing, stock-taking, dispensing and selling of drugs and for the acquiring, sending by parcel post, and carrying of drugs and their analogies, as well as raw materials, semi-finished products, chemicals and special equipment used in making drugs across national borders.

To implement research, training and educational measures in a national program it is essential to set up a single research and study center consisting of facilities capable to perform specific tasks of dealing with drug addiction. These tasks should be defined in the national program without overstepping their limits, so as not to squander means and resources on meeting other goals. For example, the tasks of the research facility should be to identify drugs, establish new types of drugs and study the most pressing problems of efforts aimed at stopping drug addiction. There is a need to establish how money obtained from the narcotics trade is laundered and determine methods for halting this process; a need to develop methods for examining controlled deliveries, documenting them and obtaining evidence which could determine guilt of the involved parties. The research center could work out methods for carrying out searches and other actions to uncover illegal drug operations and actions of those guilty, including sponsors, leaders and members of organized crime groups. The research center could summarize international experience in combating drug addiction, including school and out-of-school psycho preventive education for minors, preventive measures among population groups considered to be at a risk, and educational and preventive activity by means of mass media.

Special attention should be paid to law-making measures devoted to combating drug addiction. It is expedient to include in the national program provisions regulating legal drug turnover, regulations for the treatment, and rehabilitation of drug addicts. It is necessary to develop and pass the law on the responsibility for laundering drug money ensure and to treatment of drug patients grown drug-bearing plants for personal use at therapy centers or narcological hospitals, who have made, bought or kept drugs or have sown without selling them, rather than making them face criminal responsibility.

Economic and financial measures in the national program should provide for funding to actually put this program into effect. It should also ensure the functioning of the law-enforcement agencies engaged in the anti-drug programs, of narcological institutions and drug control services, as well as support for persons who use fields where drug-bearing crops had been cultivated earlier but later destroyed. Also the program should develop provisions about the application of financial measures against the laundering of drug money.

When it comes to organizational measures, it would be expedient to single out purely organizational and also informational, analytical, and material- technical ones.

It seems that priorities of the program should be to strengthen subunits of the law enforcement agencies, and of narcological centers, specializing in programs against drug abuse; to set up drug control agencies, encourage anti-drug programs by the greatest number of agencies, organizations, and mass media. The priority is promoting cooperation between all agencies and organizations engaged in combating drug abuse; in establishing a research center for studying problems of combating drug addiction, in training and up-grading the qualifications of specialists, expected to work in their field; and in setting up a data bank on drug addiction.