Buying Heroin Moscow

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Buying Heroin Moscow

For months, Artyom had watched with concern as the park near his house turned into a popular drop spot for drug dealers. The shrubs provided the perfect cover for hiding narcotics their clients would later dig up. After rushing Tosha to a nearby vet, it dawned on Artyom that he would have to take matters into his own hands. He had already informed the police about the park many times, but they did nothing. These dead drops are neatly sealed and equipped with small magnets so they can cling to rails, windowsills and drainage pipes. While the goods are delivered to these unlikely corners of Moscow, the deals themselves now originate in an even more bizarre place. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are the legal tender here. In exchange, buyers are issued GPS coordinates to the spot where their purchases await in flower beds and drain pipes. As of January , the narcotic industry was turning an annual profit of 1. One online drug supermarket owner told the news website Lenta. The online marketplace has also proven almost impossible to police. Highest Quality Cocaine! Every 5th Drop Free! The site is part of a highly competitive and customer-oriented industry. Unlike in the pre-internet days, drug users are no longer forced to meet with shady characters prone to supplying low-quality products. Dealers offer an exhaustive description of their wares, their chemical components and growing methods for marijuana, mushrooms and other plant-based narcotics. And quality control is almost obsessive. In the de-monopolized, competitive market of the internet, suppliers are no longer motivated by the short-term benefits of diluting their product with cutting agents. Cheating is actively discouraged by the site. The most popular items are marijuana and amphetamines. Both have one major advantage: They do not need to be imported. This is precisely what Sergei did. He had already had some dealing experience in the pre-internet days. Sergei is a logistics middleman. He coordinates operations between labs, wholesale dealers, and individual online stores. Petersburg, where a typical online business might employ dozens, including growers, chemists, shopkeepers, and couriers. He loses little sleep over the illegality of his business. I had to let this guy go. While the online market may seem safer than the pre-internet days of in-person deals and narcotics with uncertain contents, it is proving a serious problem for Moscow residents and police alike. These issues are not entirely new. Drug corners are a notorious feature of many urban areas. During the tumultuous mids, entire Russian towns were practically overrun with drug dealers and their clients in various stages of addiction and withdrawal. But with the advent of online supermarkets, the drug dealers have sprinted far ahead of law enforcement, which is still struggling to adapt to the internet age. Plagued by hoarders and frustrated by the flaccid police response, Muscovites like Artyom have begun running their own anti-narcotics patrols. They said hoarders were difficult to catch. The organization was demoted last year from an independent government agency, the Federal Service for Drug Control, to a department within the Interior Ministry. Aleksandr Mikhailov, a retired drug enforcement officer, is critical of recent reforms within the ministry. But he is prepared to cut his colleagues some slack. The structure of the fight against drugs is still being formed. And policing the online markets is an exasperating task. The Directorate for Drug Control declined to comment for this article, citing ongoing investigations. The department does not distinguish between online and offline drug offenses. Recently released crime statistics from the Interior Ministry show that 71, drug-related crimes were registered in Russia in the first four months of However, there is no way of knowing how many of those crimes related by online drug markets. The new challenges facing drug enforcement agencies are not confined to Russia, says retired officer Mikhailov. Rather, this is a global issue. Among most difficult challenges are new online drug markets and the increasingly dangerous substances filling their virtual shelves. According to a UN report, there has been a fivefold increase in seizures of new synthetic psychoactive substances worldwide. If the Directorate shuts down one — like the FBI did with SilkRoad and its clones — dozens more will rush to fill the void, he says. Rather, he believes drug enforcement agencies should decrease demand by investing in programs that raise awareness about the dangers of drugs. The technology dealers are using is growing ever more innovative. Drugs can now be delivered by drones. There are Twitter bots promoting Chinese online stores selling methadone. These innovations show no sign of slowing. The best cops can do, another online drug store owner told the Moscow Times, is to ambush a popular hoarding site in the hopes of filling their monthly arrest quota. If detained, a hoarder might reveal the location of another popular dead drop site. And with their illegal industry growing more profitable and increasingly professionalized, few sellers express any qualms about their business. We are facing unprecedented challenges. Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has designated The Moscow Times as an 'undesirable' organization, criminalizing our work and putting our staff at risk of prosecution. This follows our earlier unjust labeling as a 'foreign agent. These actions are direct attempts to silence independent journalism in Russia. The authorities claim our work 'discredits the decisions of the Russian leadership. We, the journalists of The Moscow Times, refuse to be silenced. But to continue our work, we need your help. Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. It's quick to set up, and every contribution makes a significant impact. By supporting The Moscow Times, you're defending open, independent journalism in the face of repression. Thank you for standing with us. Support The Moscow Times! My account Signout. Contribute today. By Alexey Kovalev. Yevgeny Tonkonogy. The producers This is precisely what Sergei did. Read more about: Drugs. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter Our weekly newsletter contains a hand-picked selection of news, features, analysis and more from The Moscow Times. You will receive it in your mailbox every Friday. Never miss the latest news from Russia. We sent a confirmation to your email. Please confirm your subscription. Not ready to support today? Remind me later. Remind me. Thank you! Your reminder is set. We will send you one reminder email a month from now. For details on the personal data we collect and how it is used, please see our Privacy Policy. Read more. Israel Asks Putin to Pardon U. Russia Sentences U. Russia Moves to Legalize Epilepsy Drug After Mothers Accused of Drug Smuggling Two mothers who ordered the drug online for their epileptic children were detained this summer, sparking calls to re-register it in Russia.

Kabul to Moscow with a suitcase full of heroin

Buying Heroin Moscow

Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. We undertook qualitative interviews with injecting drug users primarily heroin in three Russian cities: Moscow, Barnaul, and Volgograd. Policing practices and how these violate health and self emerged as a primary theme. Findings show that policing practices violate health and rights directly, but also indirectly, through the reproduction of social suffering. Yet we also identify cases of resistance to such oppression, characterised by strategies to preserve dignity and hope. We identify hope for change as a resource of risk reduction as well as escape, if only temporarily, from the pervasiveness of social suffering. Future drug policies, and the state responses they sponsor, should set out to promote public health while protecting human rights, hope and human dignity. The system is designed in such a way that any person can be grabbed and annihilated in prison. The strategies adopted by the signatory countries to achieve this ambitious goal have in turn been framed by three major international drug treaties: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as amended by a protocol ; the Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and the Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs. These Conventions emphasize an approach to tackling drug problems that focuses predominantly on law enforcement measures, giving priority to reducing the supply and use of drugs by means of their legal prohibition and punishments for people involved in the illicit drug trade, including those who possess drugs for personal use Elliot et al. The effectiveness of global drug policies which place priority on drug control through law enforcement has long been questioned Westermeyer, ; Seccombe, ; Wolfe and Malinowska-Sempruch, Quite apart from prohibition policies failing to reach their primary goal in the face of the globalization of drug use, there is growing concern of their iatrongenic effects regarding the violation of human rights and the promotion of otherwise preventable health risk among affected populations Csete, ; Csete and Wolfe, ; Wolfe, This brings into focus the need for research which explores how economic and political institutions, whether globally, nationally or locally, reproduce social and economic conditions which shape health harm and inequalities Krieger, , ; Rhodes, The criminal justice system is one of the most visible, and best documented, structural mechanisms perpetuating social suffering and health risk related to drug use Rhodes, There is a large literature linking policing practices, and fear of the criminal justice system, to iatrogenic drug use effects, including HIV, overdose, tuberculosis, bacterial infections, and violence Friedman et al. Prisons constitute physical expressions of risk environment, including for HIV and tuberculosis, and like other forms of criminal justice intervention, disproportionately affect minority populations Bourgois, ; Galea and Vlahov, ; Lemelle, Importantly, the iatrogenic effects of drug policies are indirect and direct. Policing practices targeting the vulnerable, for example, are institutionalized expressions of social and moral regulation, made manifest through everyday techniques of policing and community surveillance up to and including the use of excessive force Cooper et al. Policing policies can reproduce, indeed reinforce, underlying social injustices, fears and inequalities. As such they can combine with other forces of structural violence to sustain environments of risk and social suffering Rhodes, Poverty, racism and gender inequalities provide examples. Each of these perpetuate constraints in agency, leading to unequal opportunity and disproportionate social suffering for the marginalized Farmer, Crucially, the institutionalization, and everyday internalization, of structural violence can render it invisible Scheper-Hughes, ; Farmer et al. A growing body of epidemiological evidence corroborates the use of drugs, including risky drug use, as a response to social discrimination and social stress in high risk environments, including those linked to terror Vlahov et al. While nation states have some autonomy in their interpretation and execution of drug policy as framed by the international Conventions, in Russia there is a history of state sponsored repression of individual rights, as well as a strong emphasis on law enforcement as a mechanism of social control, and a strong under-current of state surveillance Applebaum, ; Lipman, The science and practice of drug treatment in Russia — narcology — developed out of psychiatry in close collaboration with other state mechanisms of social control, including police agencies Elovich and Drucker, Close links between narcology and police agencies remain Bobrova et al. Access to drug treatment automatically requires official registration as an addict, which involves the removal of various citizenship rights, such as the rights to employment, as well as exposure to social stigma Bobrova et al. The effectiveness of drug treatment approaches which are modelled on alcohol detoxification methods remain questionable, are linked to high rates of relapse, and are framed by a policy response at Federal level which prohibits the use of internationally accepted methadone and buprenorphine as substitution treatment Elovich and Drucker, ; Mendelevich, ; Human Rights Watch, Street-level policing practices in Russia have been found to fuel a pervasive sense of risk, and fear of arrest, fine or detainment, among IDUs, which in turn is linked to their reluctance to carry needles and syringes, thereby increasing the chances of high risk syringe sharing at the point of drug sale Rhodes et al. Police agencies themselves emphasise a rationale of intense surveillance of drug users, enforced through a combination of extremely restrictive criminal articles on possession and the use of administrative codes unrelated to drug use Rhodes et al. Moreover, civil society responses to HIV prevention, treatment and care for IDUs remain weak, as does public health policy and infrastructure, which depends heavily upon international donation Sarang et al. Taken together, an overarching emphasis on law enforcement at the expense of public health approaches may promote a risk environment enabling HIV risk while violating human rights to health. These violations are made possible by the promotion, at Federal level and below, of excessively severe legal restrictions surrounding drug possession and use. Human rights organisations have characterised drug policy in Russia primarily in terms of its criminalisation, stigmatisation and dehumanisation of people who use drugs Human Rights Watch, , Details of the qualitative research methods have been described elsewhere Sarang et al. In brief, for the qualitative component, IDUs were recruited through snowball methods by outreach workers trained as fieldworkers from local harm reduction services. The involvement of peer researchers and outreach workers in combination with recruitment introductions made via social networks of IDUs likely facilitated trust and engagement in the research. People who reported injecting in the last four weeks were eligible. Data collection was via semi-structured interviews using a topic guide focusing on patterns of drug use, risk practices, and access to health services. All interviews were conducted by outreach workers trained as fieldworkers, tape-recorded, and transcribed vertabim. The analysis was inductive and thematic, with thematic data coding working primarily at the level of participant description, and taking place during as well as post data collection. Related themes of fear, stigma and violence were also prominent. Written informed consent was obtained from all respondents. No personal data were obtained or recorded. All names used in interviews were omitted or changed during transcription and all tapes were destroyed after transcription. This research sought to benefit its participants indirectly through the development of service provision in each of the localities via close collaboration with HIV prevention and outreach service providers. The average length of drug injecting career was 7. While interviews were broadly focused on HIV risk perception, the theme of law enforcement dominated accounts. We focus here on this theme. Our findings illustrate how law enforcement practices, and particularly extrajudicial practices, generate fear and terror in the everyday lives of IDUs, shaping their responses to risk avoidance and survival. Moreover, we see how policing practices contribute to stigma , a sense of powerlessness, and fatalistic acceptance of risk. Yet we also identify nonconforming cases of resistance to such oppression, which appear characterised by strategies to preserve hope and dignity. This leads us to consider hope for change as an important resource of risk reduction as well as escape, if only temporarily, from the pervasiveness of social suffering. Access to sterile needles and syringes through pharmacies, and to a lesser extent via needle and syringe programmes NSPs , in all three cities was perceived as unproblematic Sarang et al. Despite this, around a quarter of IDUs reported that they had injected with a needle or syringe previously used by someone else in the last 4 weeks. When asked why, fear of coming into contact with the police was often cited:. This is the very main reason. Fear of police was rooted in a sense being under constant surveillance, the force and reach of which was inescapable. There is no claim to privacy. There is nothing secret from the police:. You cannot hide anything from them, they know everything about us, they know every junky by sight. You cannot hide from them. Fear and terror are made manifest via a variety of policing practices, many of which are extrajudicial. These practices are experienced as forms of violence, both physical and symbolic, and shape everyday life and survival. We describe these practices below. Accounts draw frequent attention to unjustified arrest as a taken-for-granted activity. Police were described as not requiring any formal justification to stop or arrest any person of their choosing. There was a basic acceptance that policing practices were not subject to any legal or moral restriction, and that the police have unlimited power. Being young, looking like a drug user, and being in the wrong place, all suffice as reasons for stop and search. Although drug use per se is not a criminal offence under Russian law, needle track-marks alone were sufficient evidence for police detention. I had one tiny needle prick mark, and my friend had the same. If they find needle marks, then you get the full of it. They can just lock you up for two weeks, just, like for examination. They cannot lock you up for using \[drugs\], they can lock you up for possession, transportation, but not for use. You either give away your money or you give away your freedom. Arresting drug users enables police to generate income through bribes and to fulfill their formal arrest quotas. As noted in other Russian cities, drug users provide easy targets Rhodes et al. Arresting drug users is what police do:. Usually police hang around the \[drug selling\] spots. They know where drugs are sold. A junky comes in, gets the drug, gets out and they arrest him right there. Their job. They report with it, as far as I know. The most efficient means by which police were said to create opportunities for arrest for drugs possession was to plant the evidence:. And where will they get them? Obviously he will say that you bought it, and he just got you. Planting drugs by police was routine. These practices, while beyond the law, were borne out of structural pressures, and had become an accepted feature of police work:. Well at the Ditch \[drug selling village\] they plant drugs on someone every day… Well, they have to justify their salaries, and therefore they arrest. Drugs planted — a new star on the shoulder-straps. Plant drugs to get rewards? Everybody has a job to do. They met me on the street, put on handcuffs, brought me to the \[police\] department, put hanka \[liquid opiate\] in my pocket, called witnesses, and started the case. They just saw that I had needle marks. They just pushed their own \[drugs on me\], just to get their collar quota for the day. I served \[in prison\] on a zone for the under-aged \[minors\]. They took me to the \[police\] department, shoved it \[drugs\] into my \[cigarette\] pack. Then I spent two days in a cell, and then they let me out. But two months later I walked and came across cops again. Extortion was also routine. They stop you all the time. They come there \[to drug selling sites\], catch junkies and rip them off. So just give them a hundred \[rubles\] and then go fix in peace. So they just come to the Ditch \[drug selling area\] to get some beer money. There were maybe ten, twenty, twenty five houses which sold \[drugs\]. They were all concentrated in one place. And everyone made profit from these houses. Everyone: guards, the patrols, the narcs, the city \[police departments\], the kray \[police departments\], they all shook down the gypsies \[who sold drugs\]. They all were fed there. And right in the same spot that they busted junkies, and sold \[drugs\] and traded. All of them. Or they would just sit there and hustle cash. Like you come there, you want to buy drugs, come to the house. Well, you see, right there is a \[police\] car waiting for some junky to come by to the spot. The entry fee is rubles; you pay rubles and you are welcome. Routine extortion usually involved small amounts between 30 and rubles , sufficient to avoid conflict, arrest or detainment, but larger amounts would be extorted where possible:. I was coming back from the University, and I dropped by a pharmacy to buy syringes. When I walked out to the street I was surrounded by a crowd, maybe six people, police. They checked my documents, they checked my purse, put a gram of heroin into it. And consequently, I gave them almost a thousand dollars, just not to get it \[the case\] on paper. I went there and bought \[drugs\]. And as soon as I entered the doorway I was busted. That boy \[who sold drugs\] ratted on me. So they took me to the department straight away and I spent four days there. My mother had to buy me out for three thousand dollars. She gave money to the judge too, so not to have a court trial. But the trial happened anyway, and I got two and a half years. While payment does not guarantee protection as the above extract illustrates , being unable to pay risks serious consequences, including imprisonment:. She spent a year in prison and a month in detention. And then they just planted it on her. They never release anyone for free. So they put her in prison. Drug users may wittingly or unwittingly act as police informants, and some may be persuaded to do so by the promise of protection. With the police actively and directly involved in the drug trade in some locations, largely as a means of extorting money or drugs, trust among users and dealers is extremely fragile, with individual users open to risk:. Dealers have agreements with police and they turn in those who buy from them. And they explained to us that all sales are final. There were cases, of course, when they had to buy their own heroin back from police. While planting drugs and the extortion of small amounts of money were normalised as mundane features of police work and appeared to have at least some basis in reciprocal functionality, even if the terms of such exchange clearly favoured police interests, other practices of fear or violation were less mundane and appeared borne out of extreme acts of moral indignation, aggression or subordination. This was the case regarding police acts of physical violence and torture. So, naturally they pulled me out of the car. They broke all windows. Put us on the ground. For twenty minutes we were laying spread-eagled on the snow. Then, they took us to a police station. They naturally beat him a little bit, they beat me a little bit too, just punched me in the stomach a couple times. Why should I tell him that I had been clean and just started up again? And he just hit me so strongly! Well, I remembered this meeting for a long time. His fist was like three of mine. I was even surprised. And led me to some gloomy room. I smoke. And then the door opens. The bright light hits my eye, I inhale, and straight into the \[cigarette\] coal they just hit me on the face. And then it starts: bang, bang, bang, bang. They beat me so strongly! Police violence could be brutal, acting as severe punishment in the absence of obvious legal cause or rationale. This is the story of an occasional injector from Moscow:. We were just standing \[on a street\] talking with my girlfriend. So a policeman comes by and asks to show my passport, as they always do. So he takes me out into his booth to question me about my background. And they just start to get to me. Then my girl comes in. And they searched her too and found the pack of Russian cigarettes \[in which the ganja was kept\], and that was it. He locked us both into these bars, there were maybe five other people in there. And he just starts to bully my girl. And when I start reacting he just tears me out of there and starts to beat me, methodically on my belly, legs, and other parts so not to bruise me too much. Then when he got tired he just stretched me out on the floor, put handcuffs behind my back, pulled my legs through my arms and just left me there. No reason. This is just scary. Some kind of real fascism. This kind of scorning. They burnt my arms with cigarettes, to feel if they are already went numb or not. Some officers crafted their own instruments or methods of torture. Here are three examples:. It was a winter. It was late and dark. So they meet us with open arms and pull us into the bus. And so they start. And he pulls out these wooden blocks, and there are two holes in each of them and they are inserted on a rope through a ring. Tell me where did you get hanka. He \[police Major\] has the distinction of being particularly pitiless with junkies. He considered them animals… He just disliked them so much, he liked to, like, put a gas-helmet with an ash tray, you know this joke? Then he also liked to play with the telephone, you know this old-fashion telephone with a disk, so he just takes out two bald cables, puts a wet cloth on your belly, puts the two cables there and starts to twist the disk. And we used to use hanka back then. So they put you up, search you. They found a syringe loaded with anhydrite \[acid\]. So they just pull your pants back, and, oops, splash this anhydrite. Kick your butt with their baton and off you go. On your genitals? Yes, yes, just splashed it there. They did it, motherfuckers. Accounts of drug users involved in sex work not only emphasized the regular extortion of money, but also, sex. This was a term used in the Soviet period to refer to semi-volunteer work without payment on non-work days to the benefit of the State. As was described:. Subbotnik is this kind of thing, they can just pull a girl out from the car by her hair, and not only one girl, but how ever many sit there, put her in their car and take away, fuck her for free in whatever way they like. They can even beat her, in this or that way, and also do their raid on prostitutes. Sometimes they take you to the \[police\] department and force you to work with the whole department… You start to resist, they just break your arms, they hit you or… Of course, a girl will not report on them. As reported elsewhere Cooper et al. Fear of police interruption led to preparing injections as fast as possible, involving short-cuts in needle hygiene:. Naturally, one tries to do everything as quickly as possible. You have to be quick, before the neighbours show up, or the police show up, or somebody calls someone. Fear of police contact also encourages drug injectors to inject in hidden locations, often not conducive to maintaining hygienic injecting practices:. And so everything takes place in filth. I would surely prefer to buy my stuff and just walk home in peace! And there I could do everything in a nice civilized manner: with a tourniquet, an alcohol-swab, with the ambulance number dialed on my phone just in case I pass out. All these niceties. And so I have to do everything in the entryway of some building, crouching and squeezing my arm with my knee, searching for this little vein. As we have observed in other Russian cities Rhodes et al. But it happens that people come there from other towns or other districts. Sometimes they just leave their syringes, hide them somewhere. You can never be sure that nobody has used your syringe. You never know. Our findings suggest a fatalism of risk acceptance among IDUs, which we believe is in part borne out of the pervasive fear and terror generated by the policing practices described above, which are experienced as both relentless and without limits. Extrajudicial policing practices are described on the one hand as normal, natural, and expected. They have become routine features of how police work is done. On the other hand, extrajudicial police practices are by definition beyond legal boundary or rationality, and physical violence, torture and rape provide extreme examples. Such risks are experienced as beyond individual control. Extrajudicial policing practices have to be lived through. Risk acceptance may thus be accompanied by a sense of tempered expectations, even hopelessness. The following extract is from the account of a HIV positive drug using sex worker from Volgograd, who is reflecting upon her route to prison:. The detectives, they caught me and then … You know, if you want them to let you free you have to do something for them. So I promised that I would help them, like I will surrender \[inform on\] someone. And so, next time they met me, they just took me to the department, kept there for two days in a cell, until I signed a paper, that I had drugs on me. They framed it up as Part 1 \[possession of large amounts without intention to sell\] — pot, but during the investigation they changed it to Part 3 \[possession of especially large amount with intention to sell and organized crime\]. They just offered to me: choose, here is a line of heroin, a bag of pot, or a syringe. I say, what is easier? They say pot. I agreed. So, that was it. So, I served my term just for nothing. But try saying a word to them! Moreover, extrajudicial policing practices can be experienced as stigmatizing, as forces of prejudice upheld through unjustified use of law and its representatives, which for some may be ultimately internalized as self-blame or shame:. For all I care, let them \[junkies\] all die. It is my opinion, that we should \[treat them\] like dirty pigs. You know, there is this pit under Orlovka \[a city nearby\], and they should all be taken there and killed. Despite a sense of powerlessness in the face of police bespredel , we identified in some accounts instances of resistance. The following extract from the story told by a young girl from Moscow is one example. Here, police demands are successfully renegotiated:. I was detained near a pharmacy where Tramal \[an analgesic\] was sold. And they designated a sum of about dollars, which I had to pay them. And the guy whom they brought with me paid dollars. This story contrasts with the majority of accounts presenting police demands as essentially unavoidable and limitless. I was preparing the medicine \[an illegal drug\] at home, they just flew in. I already had a syringe in my hands. I just quickly hid it \[the drug\]. I dropped it under my bed. So they just tied my hands. Took me to the police department, and there they showed me the \[arrest\] order. They just sentenced me without my presence. And I looked up the last name \[on the order\], and it turns out that this judge already judged me for three times. And this, again, is not allowed by the law, that same judge does three cases of one person. So, they took me to prison. The same very day they brought me to prison. But then I decided to write an appeal and after one and a half months I went to the Oblast \[regional\] court and they threw out my case completely. They may also seek to resist a descent into fatalism and hopelessness. While these accounts depict low expectations and severe constraints on individual agency, they do so without total loss of hope for change. Here, hope emerges as a resource of self-protection as well as of change for the better. The following extract captures one interviewee reflecting on the symbolic work done by harm reduction workers. The syringe received is not merely a material resource for harm reduction but a symbol of hope and care in the face of pervasive social suffering:. I never shared this \[his personal story\] with anyone. Even to my parents I never told that much. And here, with you, I talk, right? The guy, who, the guy \[another IDU\] I know, we just talked with him. I explained my problems, opened my soul, right? They gave me normal new syringes. For free. How did I deserve these cigarettes?! We talked later. We were sitting and reasoning, and I came to a conclusion that somebody is trying to, yes trying to take junkies, not under control but, lets say give them more attention, understand them somehow. Trying to get in their shoes. And not as a pay off. Just normally they gave him syringes, cigarettes. I had this, you know, shadow of doubt. But then I analyzed the situation and thought that if they go around and ask people, it means that some work here will be done. They gave me the address of this center \[needle and syringe exchange\]. I will even try to go there. So a person, let us say, believed , right? That he is not all abandoned like in the middle of \[a\] human crowd. That he has some kind of way out, right? Where he could head for… \[Male, 19, Barnaul\]. In the three Russian cities participating in this study, we found policing practices targeting injecting drug users IDUs to violate health, as well as individual rights. The brutality of police practices violate health directly, but also indirectly through the reproduction of day-to-day social suffering, which in turn can be internalized as self-blame, lack of self-worth, and fatalism regarding risk. These findings illustrate how law enforcement practices, particularly extrajudicial practices, generate an atmosphere of fear and terror , which shapes everyday practices of risk avoidance and survival among IDUs. Policing practices contribute to the reproduction and experience of stigma , and linked to this, a sense of fatalistic acceptance of risk, which may become crucial in shaping health behaviour, including HIV prevention. Yet we also identify nonconforming cases of resistance to such oppression, characterised by strategies to preserve dignity and hope. This leads us to consider how hope for change provides an important resource of risk reduction as well as escape, if only temporarily, from the pervasiveness of social suffering. Following Singer , and others on structural violence Farmer, ; Farmer et al. Assaults by police on the health and well-being of IDUs appear relentless, and importantly, limitless as captured in the concept of police bespredel , the overwhelming sense that there are no limits or restrictions on police power. Our data present a wide variety of extrajudicial policing practices that produce an atmosphere of fear and terror in the daily lives of IDUs. A culture of fear — regarding exposure, surveillance, detection, and harm — surrounds everyday street life connected to drug use, and state sponsored terror becomes a key stratagem of structural violence. Unlike global terror linked to macro-level social stress, which is linked to drug use as a form of chemical coping Vlahov et al. Importantly, policing practices targeting drug users may feature as part of a wider social relation of inequality. Structural violence affecting the vulnerable is normalised and internalised Bourdieu, ; Farmer et al. It is perceived as a natural part of daily life Scheper-Hughes, The internalization of social suffering and the acceptance of its mechanisms as normative, means that those marginalized can become complicit in their subordination, even unwittingly Kleinman, Das and Lock, Resistance against such pervasive violence is difficult. Attempts to escape oppression illness even if only temporarily — for example, by self-medicating with drug use — may only reproduce structural position or invite further repression Singer, Structural violence is reproduced not only between drug users and law enforcement agencies — for example, by drug users entering into relationships of extortion to prevent arrest or detainment, but also between and among drug users themselves — for example, as shame, stigma and self-blame. As normative processes, the mechanisms of structural violence render themselves mundane, even invisible. Challenging how policing practices reproduce structural violence also becomes harder when such practices are framed, even if tangentially, by law, including international law. The international drug Conventions of the United Nations offer a framework in which law enforcement and the reduction of drug supply and use at the level of nation-state, takes precedence over public health and the protection of individual rights Barrett et al, ; Elliot et al. Additionally, they fail on their own terms, as set out by the UNGASS Declaration on Drugs, to bring about significant decreases in the use of illicit drugs globally by The history of unrestrained oppression by state structures in Russia, such as the police, the courts, and the prison and psychiatric institutions, create a cultural context that frames state responses to drug control and other social problems. Drug policy reform may require fundamental structural reform towards establishing legal protection of citizenship and human rights. The exposure and documentation of police assaults on health and human rights represents an important step in this regard, as well as an important means towards preventing the further spread of HIV Human Rights Watch, ,. The extent to which this is practically possible may be questioned, especially given the indirect involvement of the marginalized in reproducing their own subordination, but our findings suggest that even while expectations are tempered in the face of relentless assaults on health and self, a sense of self-dignity and hope for a better future may be preserved. The preservation of hope may provide an important resource of self-protection in the face of risk as well as for building social network responses enabling changes for the better. As illustrated by one account of resistance in our study, there is a need for interventions to help affected communities to increase their awareness and preparedness to protect their rights and to feed advocacy efforts at local, national and international levels. Peer education in human rights and advocacy for change should become core components in harm reduction and HIV prevention work. More generally, future drug policies should be reoriented towards protecting human rights, the de-stigmatization of drug users, and the protection of their health, hope and human dignity. We dedicate this paper in loving memory of Valera Hrych Belyavtsev, a poet and a tramp from Togliatti City. As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Subst Use Misuse. Published in final edited form as: Subst Use Misuse. Find articles by Anya Sarang. Find articles by Tim Rhodes. Find articles by Nicolas Sheon. Find articles by Kimberly Page. PMC Copyright notice. The publisher's version of this article is available at Subst Use Misuse. Similar articles. Add to Collections. Create a new collection. Add to an existing collection. Choose a collection Unable to load your collection due to an error Please try again. Add Cancel.

Buying Heroin Moscow