Organized Social Development as a Basis of Anti-Drug Policy:

Prevention, Rehabilitation and Re-socialization, Public Development

Speech by V.P. Ivanov at the Conference “Prevention Strategy and

Policy Makers A “Solidarity Consortium”

Rome, October 09, 2012

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for an opportunity to deliver a speech at such a high-level

forum with a unique agenda.

Russia encountered the drug addiction problem in its current scope

rather late, and the encounter took place under highly severe conditions of the

changing political and socio-economic system, disintegration of a unified

state and an unprecedented drug aggression form the Afghan territory.

Having survived an avalanche growth of drug abuse in the 1990’s,

having withstood and stabilized the situation, we are beginning the

implementation of the strategy of the national antidrug policy aimed at a

radical turn and drastic reduction of the drug abuse level and drug addiction

in our country.

I’d like to share our vision of the fundamentals of an efficient antidrug

policy based on prevention.

The preceding speakers, particularly Dr. Gilberto Gerra whom we had

the honor to welcome in Moscow this spring, have, as it seems to us, set a

very correct direction, a vector of our discussion.

After a hundred years – a whole century – of active antidrug efforts of

the global community it is necessary, proceeding with strengthening of

prohibitive and restrictive practices, to increase a stake on formation of

public and personal capability to face a hard real-life situation and to

overcome it with dignity and flying colors. It’s this resilience that must

become a lead-star of the global antidrug policy.

It is particularly important in a global crisis which, as I am convinced

and you will agree with me, dear colleagues, is of not just financial and

economic but of an evident public and civilization nature.

The more important is the initiative of promotion of the Solidarity

Consortium as a universal model of an antidrug and general policy in today’s

world.

How should we implement this correct course in our daily work?

I believe that we should proceed from the strategy based on four

nucleuses of a preventive antidrug policy: preventive measures themselves to

prevent addiction; police measures to suppress supply; re-socialization and

rehabilitation of drug addicts; and organization of public development on an

innovative basis.

It should be, in our opinion, a kind of a four-nuclear antidrug

processor.

I am convinced that only in case of such a complex approach a basic

integrated and well-balanced classic approach of the UN to the antidrug

policy can be implemented.

Let me characterize these four nucleuses, emphasizing the three least

evident ones.

Firstly, it means special police measures to undermine infrastructure of

the drug business and to prevent involvement of young people into drug

abuse by small drug dealers.

Here we should proceed from a totally correct and prospective vision

of the nature of drug abuse as a social virus – a socially contagious and

epidemiological process, where young people are getting involved into and

infected with drug abuse with a great force and by means of sophisticated

techniques.

Such an approach underlies the Swedish antidrug model, and we must

thank the prominent Swedish figures, primarily Niels Bejerot – an

outstanding thinker, organizer, devotee and founder of the Swedish antidrug

model.

And since drug abuse is contagious like plague, no prevention is

possible without correctly organized intensive socio-police hygiene.

I focus on it not so much and not just because I am the head of the

Russian FDCS, but because we’ll never cope with demand without

understanding the dialectics of demand and supply.

Indeed, how serious could prophylactic measures be in a situation of

tremendous, truly planetary/universe pressure of global drug trafficking –

both Afghan and Latin American?

It is particularly clear for Italy, since it’s in your country that the two

global drug streams/flows meet in their aspiration to undermine stability and

the very basis of the society.

Today’s understanding of the demand and supply dialectics requires,

alongside with taking steps within drug abusing countries, to fully and

efficiently implement actions aimed at liquidation of the very sources of drug

supply and drug pressure.

Actual protection of our youth and prevention measures start with

straight-out liquidation of two global centers of drug production – in

Afghanistan and Latin America, which supply their deadly products to

Europe, Russia and North America.

The specifics of the centers means that we are facing extremely

powerful industrial production focused in a limited geographic space but

which is at the same time a global macroeconomic force.

By the way, it’s the functioning of these two centers that directly

undermines the global financial sphere, the Euro zone inclusive, and

eventually and mercilessly undermines employment and the general quality

of life of young people, pushing them into the drug mafia clutches.

The slide shows that the growing global financial and economic crisis

and speculative parasitic economics are directly linked to criminal drug

income, since that black drug money lets a number of banks eliminate deadly

liquidity shortages. And to prevent the development of the crisis into a

catastrophe, we must knock out its financial basis – primarily liquidate global

drug production centers, as well as establish public and state control over the

banks which, in order to make profit and survive in the crisis, go for direct

promotion of global drug trade.

The second nucleus of the preventive policy is the organization of social re-

integration and re-socialization of drug addicts based on social rehabilitation

of drug addicts in special communities.

Traditionally, prevention is separated from re-socialization, where one

deals with those already involved into drug abuse.

I suppose you will agree with me that it is not quite correct, since if the

society lacks a powerful system of coping with drug abuse and rehabilitating

people, overcoming the severest, including organic, damage to drug addicts,

we have no clear vision of the boundary between reality and our efficiency.

The thing is that it is actually impossible to measure and establish the

efficiency of our “anti-drug-entrance” work, if we do not know our public

capacity at the “exit” from drug abuse.

Furthermore, Russian experience unambiguously shows that the best

centers of social rehabilitation are highly powerful prevention agents working

with teenagers and young people. Even if we take the simplest type of

prevention – antidrug propaganda, who can better explain the deadly hazard

of drug abuse than those who have had that terrible experience, but, and it’s

most important, have pulled themselves together to overcome their

dependence and are now able to fully and truly demonstrate the problem to

the society?

Therapeutic societies are the fundamental basis of the antidrug policy –

for instance, for us in Russia and, I am sure, all over the world, inspiring is

the activity of such a globally known Italian rural rehabilitation community

in San Patriniano, where in the course of labor rehabilitation ex-drug addicts

grow, amongst other things, elite grapes and make high quality wines,

exemplifying not just cured people but nearly a sample of social solidarity.

In general, in the tideway of the perfect initiative of the Solidarity

Consortium, it would make sense to think over the establishment of a kind of

a global International of rehabilitation centers. Here Russia is ready to submit

proposals and to hold a conference on new methods of social rehabilitation

and re-socialization.

The third nucleus means organization of public development on an

innovative basis.

Here we should once again recall the outstanding Swedish Niels

Bejerot, who 25 years ago warned the humanity: “Fighting drug abuse

epidemics will be probably decisive for the survival of contemporary legal

states and states of general welfare. Development towards further

proliferation of drug abuse will inevitably result in disintegration of society

and chaos”.

And nowadays we can watch intensive development of this process.

Under the conditions of the financial crisis, actual rejection of the

general welfare concept and loss of clear and vital principles, our

communities need a transition to targeted development based on the principle

of development in everybody’s interests.

Thus, as far as the public hazard of drug abuse is concerned, we are

facing today two absolutely opposite outlooks.

The first outlook means purposeful survival on alone, one’s own, self-

rescue from drug abuse.

The second outlook emphasizes dominating principles of solidarity,

mutual assistance and support.

Solidarity is a cornerstone in terms of drug addiction. We must not let

any person be involved into drug addiction, and we must rescue everyone

entangled in drug abuse nets and return him or her back to the society.

Discussions are getting more and more intensive all over the world

regarding the fact that drug abuse is allegedly a natural component of public

life, that no care should be taken of drug addicts, since it’s their own fault. It

is highly regrettable, but quite often you can read the following words: “The

sooner a drug addict dies, the cleaner the society will be”.

I suppose there is no need to prove that such principles, which

challenge not only Christianity, but all world religions and traditions, are the

main public destructors.

By the way, the same indifference toward a human being and humanity

itself stands behind the appeals to legalize drugs in order to stop the allegedly

inefficient and even harmful “drug war”.

That is why we enthusiastically support the idea of the Solidarity

Consortium, since for all policy makers it is a program of public

development, which substantially excels common restricted issues of drug

combating.

So here we have to, within the Solidarity Consortium, develop

fundamentally new approaches and methods.

It seems quite promising to inspire a new vision of the classic UN idea

of alternative development and to expand it from the task of replacement of

the drug economy in drug producing countries for the task of confrontation to

weakening or even disintegration of public life in drug abusing countries via

organization of strategic employment for young people, intensive

development of all economic spheres and transition to progressive social and

economic models.

It is through alternative development that one of the key rights of a

human being – the right for development – is implemented.

The right for development is a fundamental UN right fixed in the

Declaration of the Right for Development, which was adopted by Resolution

No. 41/128 of the General Assembly dated December 4, 1986, and supported

by a system of measures of social progress and development promotion

proclaimed in Resolution No. 2542 (XXIV) of the General Assembly dated

December 11, 1969.

It seems necessary to consolidate on working on the problem of

alternative development and implementation of the right for development,

which is not just systematically undermined by the drug mafia, but where the

drug mafia itself is in fact an integral generation of non-development.

I suppose it would make sense to discuss the new, extended idea of

alternative development also at the forthcoming expert conference in Lima in

a month.

Dear colleagues,

The Rome Initiative symbolizes a significant turn in the formation of

the global agenda. And we must to the maximum possible extent formulate

our common ideas and approaches in the communiqué of our Forum.

I am handing over our proposals to the Chairman.

I wish all of us successful and productive work during these two days.

Thank you for your attention.

Through Global Development to the Victory over Drug Addiction.

In Need of a Global Antidrug Front

Speech by Victor Ivanov at the World Forum Against Drugs,

Münchenbryggeriet, Sweden, May 20, 2012

Your Majesty,

Dear Forum Organizers and Participants,

Colleagues,

First of all I’d like to thank Her Majesty (the Queen of Sweden Silvia)

for her invitation to the Forum and for her brilliant speech at the opening of

the Forum.

It is impossible to overestimate the role of the World Forum, which

nowadays has undoubtedly become a force to consolidate the world

community, to form a global antidrug agenda and to oppose the global threat

of drug legalization and rejection of the basic antidrug conventions developed

over the past one hundred years.

For the past year we can actually observe a burst of legalization

initiatives, where a proposal “to solve the problem quickly” is made by

presidents of individual countries (Guatemala, for instance) or, like it was a

month ago, by a former director of the British Intelligence Service MI-6.

It is more than illustrative that the so-called Global Drug Politics

Commission, which directly promotes drug legalization, last year hit upon the

idea to present its definitely provocative and favoring drug legalization report

on the 1st of June – on the International Children’s Day!

No doubt this large-scale and highly aggressive PR-campaign on drug

propaganda is directly or indirectly related to enormous drug business income

estimated by experts as 800 billion US dollars per year.

The mentioned report should be unambiguously regarded as a kind of a

manifest of drug legalization supporters. If we compare the report of the so-

called Global Commission and the Declaration of the World Forum-2008, we

will see two absolutely opposite positions, two incompatible doctrines,

between which a keen and merciless fight is building up.

The objective of drug legalization supporters is to legalize transnational

organized crime, a global criminal international, to make drug trafficking

smooth and comfortable.

Their primary task is to break international unity in terms of protection

of all international hard law secured in the UN profile conventions.

Meanwhile activities of legalization supporters are perfectly organized.

Thus, for the past three years the number of sites which support drug

legalization, without taking into account global direct web networks, at least

doubled.

It is also becoming evident that one is trying to make Latin America,

where several countries of that particular region are initiating significant

concessions to drug legalization supporters, a locomotive of the global drug

legalization movement.

It is indicative that the Latin American Commission for Drug and

Democracy Concerns, which actually sticks to legalization objectives,

became a pilot project and transformed into the above-mentioned Global

Commission for Drug Politics, probably, if I may say so, to transfer “know-

how” from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern one, i.e. to the whole

world.

It is a highly dangerous tendency, and our Forum must unambiguously

express our negative opinion of it.

We are obviously facing a perfectly organized, generously paid, deeply

defended and propagandized drug front, and our obligation is to oppose it and

to set up our own Global Antidrug Front.

I believe that the Declaration of the first World Forum Against Drugs

(2008) very precisely defined drug addiction as “a modern form of slavery”.

In the beginning of the 21st century and of the 3rd millenium we must

prevent recognition of slavery as a normal phenomenon. We must advocate

the matter of freedom, truly democratic values and all those who are against

return of slavery.

In this situation it seems pressing and expedient to set up a community

of friends of the UN antidrug conventions under the World Forum. I kindly

ask you, dear participants in this Forum, to give support to my proposal.

Today the UN antidrug conventions are a kind of major quarantine

activities against the epidemic of global drug addiction specified by an

unprecedented (in the world history) scope of the drug business and

formation of classically paradigmatic, in fact, two global drug production

centers and appropriate drug trafficking.

As far back as in 1998 the founder of the Swedish antidrug model, an

outstanding thinker, organizer and enthusiast Niels Beirut warned the

humanity: “Fighting against drug addiction epidemics will be probably

decisive for survival of contemporary legal and welfare states. Development

towards further drug abuse will inevitably result in disintegration of society

and chaos.”

At the same time experts and public leaders of antidrug politics realize

that besides the protection of long-term achievements in drug combatting, it

is necessary nowadays to intensively develop a new antidrug model of

activities, since along with sweeping changes in societies and social life

principles, the very nature of drug addiction and drug crime has drastically

changed in the world, so today we have to deal with fundamentally new

challenges and threats for both individual countries/regions and the world and

international security on the whole.

Let me briefly outline the main threats and immediately offer a

package of five principal solutions.

Firstly. It is necessary to introduce a new notion of antidrug security to

the international and national security system – a notion which would be able

to reproduce appropriate instruments against an actually new threat, i.e. crime

globalization based on sustainable and long-term operation of two global

drug production centers: the South American one in the Western Hemisphere

and the Afghan one in the Eastern Hemisphere, as well as on respective drug

trafficking. It’s them that have created and have been supporting the totally

globe-entangling network drug transit which corrupts economic and political

processes in terms of growing crime and violence.

For that very reason there is a great need in essential resolutions of the

UN Security Council, beyond validity of which we would be actually

disarmed against drug addiction globalization as an induced global epidemic.

It is necessary to revise our attitude to the phenomenon of Afghan drug

production, which has lately exceeded mere drug growing and production

and has turned into a predominant factor of the global financial and economic

crisis as well as of the international situation in general.

It is high time to qualify Afghan drug production as a threat to

international peace and security as per Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Secondly. We need antidrug diplomacy as a principally new national

and international activity. Let me emphasize once again the role of our World

Forum, which has become a kind of headquarters of non-governmental

antidrug diplomacy. I’d deem it timely and very important to arrange an

Antidrug Summit of the leading countries of the world.

Thirdly. Global antidrug politics should be based on the fact that drug

production has become an indispensable component of the shadow financial

system which is generating a deadly global crisis.

The mounting global financial and economic crisis and a speculative

and parasitic economy are directly linked to criminal drug income, since such

black drug money lets a number of big banks cope with liquidity shortages

that are lethal for them.

To prevent the crisis from escalating to a catastrophe we must knock

the financial basis out of it by liquidating global drug production centers.

Fourthly. It is time to focus on organization and methods of social

rehabilitation and re-socialization. Drug addiction is nearly the main

stimulant of social and anthropological degradation of societies and human

capital undermining.

The world should combine all advanced theories and methods of

human existence renaissance via multiple social politics of organizing the

reproduction and development of national and transnational positive

communities.

I suggest organizing a special conference on new methods of social

rehabilitation and re-socialization under the auspices of the World Forum.

Fifthly. It is necessary to resolutely supplement the most important

measures of police repressions, drug prevention and drug addicts

rehabilitation with a stake on alternative development.

It is obvious nowadays that alternative development is the best primary

prevention of drug production.

In this context we’d like to welcome from this tribune the Peruvian

President’s decision to hold an antidrug forum in late June in Lima which

will focus on alternative development, as well as an expert conference in the

same place in November.

It is through alternative development that one of the key human rights

– the right for development – is enjoyed.

The right for development is a fundamental UN right stipulated in the

Declaration on the Right for Development, which was adopted by Resolution

41/128 dated December 4, 1986 of the General Assembly and is secured by a

set of measures promoting social progress and development on the basis of

on the Declaration of Social Progress and Development proclaimed by

Resolution 2542 (XXIV) dated December 11, 1969 of the General Assembly.

It seems necessary to consolidate around the alternative development

challenge and exercise of the right for development, which is not just

systematically undermined by the drug abuse, but where drug abuse itself is

in fact an integral spawn of non-development.

Today we can see how powerful our antidrug front is. And we should

pass to victories over drugs, to resolutely reject decadent moods and

conciliation with the drug mafia’s initiatives.

We shall win.

Thank you.

On Mechanisms of Integrated and Well-Balanced Antidrug Policy

Based on Infrastructural Development in Tackling the Problem of

Liquidation of the Global Center of Afghan Drug Production

Speech by FDCS Director V.P. Ivanov at the Plenary Meeting of the 55th

Session of the UN CND, March 12, 2012

Mr. Chairman,

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

This 55th Session of such a reputable organization as the UN CND is

taking place during the year of the hundredth anniversary of an outstanding

event of the previous century – the signing of a multilateral convention on

drug control: the International Opium Convention in 1912 in The Hague by

89 countries.

Commemoration of this outstanding event and the forthcoming jubilee

celebrations vest us with special responsibility and a need to stand up to the

solutions of our predecessors.

Such a key solution of already our Millennium could be demonstration

of the victory of the international community over the Afghan global center

of drug production.

It seems that the current popular opinion of experts on the situation in

Afghan drug production as something ordinary and not beyond other similar

phenomena is not just groundlessly placid, but is actually a fatal mistake.

Moreover, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan scheduled by the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization and transfer of overall responsibility for

security maintenance to the Afghan Government in 2014 is generating a

totally new – extraordinary – situation.

For ten and a half years since the Enduring Freedom Operation

commenced, about 1 million people have died of Afghan heroin and 1 trillion

dollars have been invested into organized transnational crime due to large-

scale Afghan drug production.

Consequently, a humanitarian drug catastrophe has struck not only

Eurasia but Afghanistan itself.

Thus, according to Afghan non-governmental organization “The New

Line”, up to 7 percent of Afghan people are drug addicts today.

And according to a study by a group of experts in toxicology headed by

prominent Professor of the University of Florida Dr. Bruce Goldberger, the

contemporary generation of Afghan children is doomed, since all of them are

typical opium and heroin addicts. The scientists registered unprecedentedly

high levels of drugs in children’s blood.

Dangerous concentrations of drugs are contained not only in the smoke

of adult opium smokers, but also in clothing, hair, beddings, carpets,

furniture, children’s toys as well as in breast milk of nursing mothers.

It is revealed that if such children do not get a drug, they begin to suffer

from the abstinent syndrome.

Thus, a 10-year-old girl’s hair sample contained 5607 pg/mg of a

heroin metabolite, 8350 pg/mg of morphine and 4654 pg/mg of codeine,

which correlate with parameters of a medically diagnosed adult drug addict.

No comments are needed here.

And at the same time, according to official statements, including those

of the US Congress, financial aid to Afghanistan will be substantially reduced

starting from 2014.

In a situation where foreign aid accounts for the greater part of the

Afghan national budget (approximately $8 billion of $12 billion), such

solutions without building a new economy in Afghanistan will be another

explosive stimulus for aggravation of the already catastrophic situation in the

drug production level.

All negative consequences of armed hostilities in Afghanistan, which is

ruined by 10 years of war, will come upon Afghans.

Will abandonment of one of the weakest states in the world face to face

with the global drug mafia really become the gist of the Afghanization

policy?

Or are we all prepared for another drug tsunami?

Dear colleagues,

An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary measures and full

implementation of responsibility of the world community in conformity with

the UN Charter, law and spirit.

In my speech I’d like to present, proceeding from the Five-year Plan of

Liquidation of Afghan Drug Production offered to you at the previous 54th

Session, new arguments and proposals on instruments and mechanisms to

resolve today’s key problem of liquidation of the global drug production

center as a consolidated activity of the world community under the aegis of

the United Nations.

The UN has for the past decades developed a sufficient number of

regulatory norms and standards to settle the problem.

Primarily it means:

Firstly – an integrated and well-balanced approach to antidrug policy.

Secondly – the fundamental UH right – the right for development fixed

in the Declaration on the Right for Development, which was adopted by

Resolution # 41/128 of the General Assembly on December 4, 1986.

Thirdly – a system of measures to promote social progress and

development based on the Declaration of Social Progress and Development

proclaimed by Resolution # 2542 (XXIV) of the General Assembly on

December 11, 1969.

And finally – it is the already classical method of alternative

development, which is the essential component of drug combating within the

UN system.

However, unfortunately, alternative development is still, as a thorough

report by Professor Hamid Ghodse, Chairman of the International Drug

Control Committee, shows specifically, a stepchild of drug policy and,

moreover, is reduced to a particular procedure of crops replacement.

A standard example is distribution of wheat sacks by American and

NATO soldiers in exchange for a promise to stop growing opium poppy.

However, in most cases, as we know, Afghan peasants (dekhans) gladly

accept wheat and keep on cultivating super-profitable opium poppy.

Therefore the alternative development status looks today like

commonplace profanation.

In this respect we welcome efforts aimed at drastic revision of the

contents and standards of alternative development, which began last autumn

from a workshop in Thailand and which high-ranking representatives will

consider at the International Conference on Alternative Development in

November 2012 in Lima.

We are convinced that the conference will be decisive.

It is full-scale alternative development that Afghanistan needs today

most of all.

What should it mean in practice?

Organization of industrialization and electrification of long-suffering

Afghanistan, where new technologies and infrastructures will be the primary

source and locomotive of public wealth.

I am convinced that resolution of the drug production problem consists

of arrangement of a socio-economic rise by setting up infrastructures of new

generations, which are technologically capable of providing access of the

basic part of populations to the present-day global quality of life.

A material response to the global challenge of drug production consists

of setting up of new-generation infrastructures of general – not limited –

access.

In fact, the world is now facing the need to go away from a sick

neoliberal economy that is generating inequality and narcotization of the

Earth to a new socio-economic model of development enabling to implement

the UN right for development and social progress.

The point of view I’ve just expressed coincides with the position of

Prime Minister and already elected President of Russia Vladimir Putin.

I’d also like to point out in brief that the current situation in

Afghanistan is an absolute consequence of global economy, which is in

desperate need of any money, including black drug money, to cover huge

shortages of liquidity.

You can see on the slide that cultivation of drug economy is an

indispensable condition of the very existence of today’s global economy.

It means that developing Afghanistan we work for the benefit of the

whole world.

In view of the above I propose the following mechanisms to settle the

problem of Afghan drug production, specifying the Russian plan “Rainbow-

2”.

Firstly. To set up an international operations center of assistance to

Afghanistan in order to organize industrialization and liquidation of drug

production.

Secondly. An intergovernmental operator is needed for activities of the

center. As I have already proposed, it is necessary to set up an international

target commission or agency, a kind of Afghan Development Corporation.

Thirdly. Elaboration of Afghanistan development projects. In

particular, launch of pipeline transit projects needs acceleration.

Intensification of pipeline geo-economy will provide a great stimulus

to integrate the region and oust drug production from the economic life of

Afghanistan.

Russia is ready to participate in the project of construction of the

Turkmenistan – Afghanistan – Pakistan – India (TAPI) pipeline; Russia also

supports IPI (Iran – Pakistan – India), since it will allow to improve the

economy in the provinces inhabited by the Baluchi.

I’d like to emphasize that Russia has recently developed good

relationships with regional states: thus, we have seriously advanced in

antidrug cooperation with Pakistan and Iran, and an antidrug quartet has been

set up with Pakistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

Fourthly. To set up a special target team to analyse global impact of

drug production on international economy.

Fifthly. To prepare an interactive map of liquidation of Afghan drug

production; the map will show Afghan poppy fields, locations of drug

laboratories and other drug infrastructure and logistics.

Thus, over 500 drug laboratories are concentrated only in northern

Afghanistan; they are working as a whole production cluster aimed solely at

Russia.

All more or less informed inhabitants of our planet will be able to add

information to the map. An interactive map will deal with not only crops and

drug laboratories, but also with the progress of implementation of

industrialization and electrification.

Thank you for your attention.

Settlement of the Problem of Afghan Drug Production will Allow to

Cure Global Economy

Speech by

Chairman of the State Anti-Drug Committee of the Russian Federation,

Director of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service V. Ivanov

at the Davos World Economic Forum,

January 26, 2012, Davos

Dear Chairman,

Let me thank the Davos Forum organizers for the opportunity to

deliver a speech to such a competent audience.

At the height of the first peak of the financial crisis in 2008 - 2009

deputy Secretary General of the UNO and Executive Director of the UNODC

Antonio Costa said that about 352 billion narcodollars were injected into

major world banks to avoid critical shortages of liquidity; later this money

was used for interbank loans.

Truly, according to documented investigations of criminal income

laundry, major banks are critically dependent on dirty but liquid money from

drug trade.

Here it would be appropriate to mention a high-profile case of US

Wachovia Bank which, according to official data only, pumped through its

accounts $378 billion to exchange offices controlled by Mexican drug cartels

(casas del cambio).

Two more US banks were also suspected and fined: the American

Express Bank and HSBC.

What does it mean?

First and foremost it means that drug money and its source – global

drug trafficking – is not just donors of such scarce liquidity but, in fact, a

vital and necessary segment of the whole monetary system and a component

of the current financial crisis.

Furthermore, it is this opportunity to permanently replenish such highly

demanded liquidity, that is largely a driving force of the financial-economic

and social order to continue drug production.

The very existence of a global financial bubble is in its turn supported

by the said opportunity for banks to attract liquid drug money.

Actually the current economic system is being fertilized by sewage.

And taking into account the fact that, according to commonly

recognized assessments, including those made by UN experts, drug money

annually accounts for a market of over $500 billion and that adverse

aftereffects for real economy are twice or thrice higher than the said amount,

total annual damage to global economy is $2 trillion: it is comparable to the

GDP of such countries as France or the United Kingdom.

The above makes it possible to affirm that drug money is a basis of the

current financial system.

It should be emphasized that global drug markets function according to

the laws of a demand-driven market. Meanwhile drug demand, unlike legal

market demand, is far from decline due to its integrated nature.

The two components – a kind of drivers – of such demand are widely

known biological demand of 200 million drug addicts and latent demand of

financial institutions; financial demand, which is three times stronger than the

biological one, is, like a giant collider, accelerating general demand for

preservation and extended reproduction of drug markets.

Thus, for instance, last year in Italy, according to the report by “SOS

Impresa” business association, the mafia generated over

7 percent of the country’s GDP, or about EUR 100 billion of net profit.

Therefore under conditions of the financial crisis, the Italian mafia

acted as one of the largest financial institutions, while business crediting out

of drug trade funds accounted for the most profitable part of financial

operations of such groupings as Cosa Nostra (Sicilia), Camorra (Napoli) and

Ndrangheta (Calabria).

The Italian example is most exhaustive in terms that the whole existing

global system is not just invalid but aimed at devastating the very foundation

of national communities and of the humankind.

The conclusion is evident: the world needs essentially new economy,

which the Great Transformation as well as setting up new models of

integrating nations, systems and technologies should be aimed at.

What should form the basis of new economy? It should be a

noneconomic principle of justice, going beyond pure economy toward

political economy.

Nowadays it is useful to reread Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Carl

Marx, since one has to answer the question: where public wealth is originated

from and to which extent it is really public, i.e. conforms to the interests of a

majority of populations of our countries and humankind in general.

Social stratification and inequality levels in the world convincingly

prove that the arrangement of the existing global system is not involving

generation of public wealth and positive added value, but is focused on

targeted super profit made by up-market elites due to illiquid assets

manipulation.

Consequences are evident: the above is leading to damage to real

economy and degradation of the population.

Meanwhile the growing financial bubble and, consequently, lack of

liquidity are heating the demand for services aimed at replenishing such

liquidity via drug production; this can be defined as anti services and anti

money in the global economy.

The bubble’s impact, which is making the liquidity-starved financial

system permissively absorb drug money, could account for a long-term

phenomenon of large-scale heroin production in Afghanistan.

$65 billion that the criminal world annually benefits from Afghan drug

production, turn into losses of about $200 billion a year for the global

economy.

In the meantime the society lost about one billion of young workers

during the 10 years of the existence of this phenomenon, due to mortality

from Afghan heroin.

The above definitely proves that global economy is a kind of drug

production hostage, and Afghanistan is in turn a hostage to sick global

economy.

So the question “How to deflate the financial bubble?” is to a great

extent equal to the question “How to win a victory over global drug crime?”

and, primarily, how to eliminate Afghan drug production.

The key way to eradicate global drug production is to reformat the

existing economy and to shift to the economy that excludes criminal money

and provides reproduction of net liquid assets, i.e. to the economy of

development where decisions are based on development projects and targeted

long-term credits.

An example of such an approach could be the Russian Plan of

Eliminating Afghan Drug Production “Rainbow 2” presented two years ago

to the Russia - NATO Council; its Clause 2 read: “Elaboration and

Implementation of the Program of Afghan Economic Revival and

Development via Infrastructural Development”.

It is such resolute alternative Afghan development that can lead the

whole world to the demolition of the global machine generating anti-value

and to sustainable generation of added value in the interests of all

humankind.

What does it mean in practical terms?

It means a buildup of the next generation infrastructures, not those with

limited access, but intended for general use.

In fact new global industrialization is required, where advanced

technologies and infrastructures will be the main products and carriers of new

public wealth.

Here my point of view coincides with that of the Russian Prime

Minister Vladimir Putin.

Taking into account a tectonic nature of drug production impact on the

global economy, I would propose to set up a working group to prepare a

special report for the next World Economic Forum, involving leading experts

of the UN, World Bank as well as other specialists in assessment of

challenges to international economy from global drug production.

Thank you for your attention.