deadlinelive.info | At the 53rd session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna, Russia is trying, albeit belatedly, to raise global awareness of the need to counter the Afghan drug trade.

According to the report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Russia is second only to Europe in opiate use, including heroin, and first among individual countries.

While still in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden vowed that “they will die from our drugs”. By “they” he meant Russia, which was actively supporting Ahmad Shah Masood, bin Laden’s and Mullah Omar’s greatest enemy at that time.

Bin Laden kept his word. He made this statement in 1999. Over the following 10-11 years, the number of drug addicts in Russia increased 10 times. In a single year, we use between 75 and 80 tons of Afghan heroin. The UNODC report cites these figures repeatedly. It also contains some lesser known statistics. There are between 30 and 40 thousand drug-related deaths in Russia each year. By comparison, the Soviet Union lost 15 thousand soldiers during its ten-year presence in Afghanistan