Hi, this is Gleb Kondratyev with the traditional Sunday post about “Vesna’s” political demands. Today, let’s talk about the humanization of drug policy.
The most common way to end up in prison in modern Russia is being convicted under drug-related articles — 228 and 228.1 of the Criminal Code. This makes the topic highly relevant.
First and foremost, it’s important to note that drug possession and acquisition are victimless crimes. We believe that punishment for such actions is incompatible with liberal values. Each person’s body belongs to them alone. Everyone has the right to make decisions about their own life and health as they see fit. In our view, criminal prosecution for offenses that do not harm others is a direct violation of human rights.
Articles 228 and 228.1 of the Criminal Code are not only unjust in nature. The severity of these laws has made them ideal tools for fabricating criminal cases in the hands of Russia’s repressive apparatus. Just recall the case of Ivan Golunov from four years ago. If a police officer wants to imprison someone — whether to boost crime-solving statistics or for some other reason — it’s easiest to simply plant drugs.
Consider this: selling drugs in large or particularly large quantities carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. And to “cook up” such a case, all an officer needs is to procure the necessary substance (which rarely poses a challenge for police), package it (courts often interpret packaging as preparation for sale), and plant it on someone. That’s it! An innocent person goes to prison for half their life, and the “heroic” officer gets a shiny new star on their epaulets.
Recently, Advokatskaya Ulitsa published an article about a lawyer’s fight against corrupt police officers in Vidnoye. I highly recommend reading it — it details all aspects of the police drug lawlessness in modern Russia. Police officers themselves sell drugs, arrest their own buyers, extort bribes, or plant large amounts of substances on people and then charge them with trafficking. Along the way, they bribe both state-appointed and private lawyers, and the courts issue decades-long sentences without any real evidence.
Often, those behind bars are drug users who otherwise lead normal lives, have jobs, and families. In prison, such people might get hooked on heavier substances or simply get drawn into criminal culture. It’s well-known that Russian prisons are schools for recidivism — I’ve written about this before. If someone truly has an addiction problem, it should be addressed humanely — with substitution therapy or social rehabilitation. Sending them to prison is not the answer.
“Vesna” advocates for the decriminalization of drug possession and acquisition and the abolition of imprisonment as a punishment for drug-related offenses.
