According to official figures, three percent of Kazakhstan’s population is addicted to drugs of all varieties, smuggled into the country from neighboring areas, especially Afghanistan. Since the beginning of the year, more than 47,950 residents of Kazakhstan, including 5,000 women, have been registered as regular drug users. Some start smoking hashish at the age of 13. The report of the Justice Ministry says that the cities most affected by drug addiction are Almaty and Karagandy. In the first quarter of this year, 680 residents of the capital city Astana were given treatment for drug addiction.

Kazakhstan’s public, long used to rampant drug-related crimes, cannot be easily put out by these depressing figures. Everybody knows that any government information on drug abuse reflects only the visible tip of the iceberg, and hence people are deeply distrustful of official data. One thing that everybody does not doubt is that drug addiction is assuming menacing proportions, which endanger the future of the entire nation.

Until quite recently, it was widely believed that the evil came from outside. The spread of heroin, hashish and marijuana were blamed almost unanimously on Afghans and Tajiks, who used Kazakhstan as transit route on their way to Russian markets. But after the war in Afghanistan, which supposedly destroyed the whole infrastructure of underground drug industry there, and a massive eviction of illegal migrants from Tajikistan, drug trafficking was not ebbing away in any visible manner. Last year 56 tons of drugs and intoxicating substances were seized by police. Again, that information comes from official sources, which tend to be overcautious not to stir up undesirable public emotions.

Meanwhile, police reports show that a large amount of drugs distributed in Kazakhstan comes from poppy and cannabis plantations in Chu valley in the south. These areas of wild hemp cover 850000 hectares and provide more than 40 tons of hashish annually. Drug proceeds are important means of existence for the population of the industrially underdeveloped region, where unemployment rate is much higher than in the north. Drug trafficking is not easy to handle. The vast area of adjacent Chu and Merke districts with a total population of 150,000 are controlled by a small 40-strong anti-drug unit. Rare crackdowns on local drug dealers fail to intimidate the intricately organized criminal ring.

The valley sprawls along the busiest Trans-Siberian railway line which links the southernmost cities of Kazakhstan with Russia’s interior. Policemen regularly raid trains to check the passports of passengers and occasionally take suspected drug traffickers off the train. But often a small sum, inconspicuously slipped into the pocket of a policeman, settle the matter. The root cause of the ineffectiveness of widely publicized government efforts seems to be corruption. The helplessness of law enforcement bodies in the face of unbridled drug-trafficking undermines public confidence in the integrity of the legal system.

Nevertheless, the government launched a new anti-drug crusade, allocating 1,1 billion tenge of budgetary funds to fight narcotics. Last year anti-drug spending amounted to merely 905 million tenge. The government plans to spend 1,140 billion tenge next year. But more and more government members seem to realize that money alone cannot bring the solution of the problem any nearer. As a part of the anti-drug efforts, officials have initiated a nationwide “Future Without Drugs” propaganda campaign, intended to raise public awareness of the threat.

For many years, there has been a wall of mistrust between government bodies and non-government organizations. Recent developments show clear signs of a changing official attitude towards NGOs. Regional activists of NGOs have been invited to local government offices to discuss plans for stemming drug abuse.

Government officials, parliament members and experts are holding debates over whether or not to legalize some types of “soft drugs’. Opponents of the idea claim that legalizing less harmful drugs will inevitably lead to the rise of criminality, while others hope to find a way out of the wood by legalizing some drugs. Unfortunately, polemics are not the best solution of the problem of drug dependency.