Drug Addiction Up Sharply in Soviet Union, Kremlin Says
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MOSCOW — The number of Soviet drug addicts has risen to about 46,000, an eighteenfold increase in two years, the Kremlin said today as it acknowledged that a problem once considered purely Western is spreading in the Soviet Union.
Interior Minister Alexander Vlasov gave the new figure in an interview in the Communist Party daily Pravda. The last official statistics on drug abuse, released in May, 1984, put the number of Soviet addicts at 2,500.
“The struggle against drug addiction and crime connected with it has become one of the main tasks of the Interior Ministry forces,” Vlasov said.
He added that although the number of addicts in the Soviet Union is much smaller than in the United States, the problem has worsened in the last five years and that about 80% of registered addicts are under 30.
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