The OSI International Harm Reduction Development Program publishes periodic newsflashes highlighting recent developments in international efforts to reduce harms associated with drug use.

Russian lawmakers are preparing to discuss a legislative initiative that will extend the right of government to force drug treatment on underage teens. The bill, “About Changes to Article 54 of Federal Law ‘On Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances’ and Article 24 of the Fundamentals of the Russian Federation’s Legislation on Citizens’ Health Protection,” raises the age at which children can be sent for forced treatment from 16 to 18, and includes troubling measures that extend the number of instances where parental consent is not needed for mandatory treatment. For the first time, a Russian law gives discretion to officials to impose treatment on children whose parents are alive and have not lost their parental rights.

In 2004, the Russian Duma raised the mandatory drug treatment age from 15 to 16. This current initiative is in sync with a recent massive campaign to return to the Soviet-era mandatory drug treatment, initiated by the Federal Drug Control Service in late 2006 and supported by conservative Duma members, including Evgeny Roizman, Ludmila Narusova, and Valentina Ivanova. Giving government wider discretion to force treatment on children with substance abuse not only violates the rights of minors and their families; it fails to address the shocking failures of the drug treatment system in Russia itself. Russian drug treatment is for the most part limited to very short periods of heavily medicated detoxification and is widely reported to be ineffective in preventing a return to drug use. The HIV epidemic in Russia is concentrated among drug users through non-sterile injection equipment, and 80% of Russian citizens with HIV are 15–30-years-old.

The Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, may discuss the bill in the first reading as early as in June 2007.

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