ITAR-TASS overnight news cycle for June 26 - 4.

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.World community should work out joint anti-drug program -RF service.

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MOSCOW, June 26 (Itar-Tass) -- The world on June 26 marks
International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

For Russia, as well as many other countries, the main threat is
constituted by Afghan heroin. To prevent Afghan drug trafficking, the
world community must work out a joint programme, the Russian Federal Drug
Control Service believes.
It is necessary at present to work out a joint programme of the world
community to create a real barrier on the way of Afghan drug trafficking,
a service source told Itar-Tass.
A clear and consistent anti-narcotic strategy is needed, with the
centre in the United Nations. It is the United Nations that can be and
assumes functions of a collective organiser and ideologist of the global
anti-drug fight, the source stressed.
The United Nations has launched a number of projects to prevent and
stop drug addiction.
At present drug traffic is a profitable business. Centres of drug
trafficking are Middle East and Central Asian states, and the main heroin
supplier is Afghanistan. A rather considerable share in the spread of raw
narcotics also belongs to Latin American countries, the source noted.
Rapid spread of drugs is viewed as a many-level calamity that causes
heavy consequences -- from a demographic catastrophe to criminalization of
the economic, social and political spheres, the Russian drug control
service notes.
The 42nd session of the U.N. General Assembly took the decision to
mark June 26 as International Day against Drug Abuse. However, the history
of fight against drug spread or at least attempts to somehow control drug
circulation is almost 100 years old. In February 1909, the Shanghai opium
commission with the participation of 13 countries, including Russia,
attempted to find ways to put barriers for drugs not to be brought in from
Asian countries.
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.Russian state anti-drug committee to consider policy conception.
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MOSCOW, June 26 (Itar-Tass) -- The Russian state anti-drug committee
will consider a draft anti-drug policy conception.
The committee will meet this Friday to consider it, a source at the
Federal Drug Control Service told Itar-Tass. Committee chairman and
director of the service Viktor Ivanov will make a report on the theme.
A new state drug control policy conception is needed, as the present
one approved in 1993 is absolutely declarative, obsolete and inadequate to
the challenges facing Russia, the service source noted.
The committee will also consider the main guidelines to improve the
Russian legislation in the drug control area. The meeting will discuss
creation of centres for drug traffic analysing and consider the example of
the United States and Mexico to work out measures to prevent drug
smuggling across the border.
A draft programme of measures will be also presented to the committee
to enhance the effectiveness of cooperation of federal executive
authorities on the Russian state border and improve the legislation to
prevent drug smuggling from Afghanistan, the source added.
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