Drug addiction is a dangerous disease caused by the use of drugs. It manifests itself in a chronic need to take drugs, since the mental, emotional and physical state of the patient directly depends on whether he received the drug to which the addiction has developed. Drug addiction leads to a gross violation of a person's life, his social degradation.
Drug addicts, regardless of the type of drugs they take, do not live long. They rather quickly lose the instinct of self-preservation characteristic of living organisms. According to statistics, about 60% of them consciously commit a crime or attempt suicide within the first 2 years after starting drug use.
Despite the seriousness of this problem, the history of the fight against drugs goes back just over a hundred years. In February 1909, the first international anti-drug commission was organized in Shanghai, which included the Russian Empire. The main task of the convened commission was to solve the problem of supplying opium and its derivatives to European states from Asian countries.
The world community started talking again about the need to fight drugs almost 80 years later. During this period, the problem has worsened significantly. Opium was replaced by "hard" drugs for intravenous use, the number of addicts increased significantly, and the disease itself became much younger.
In 1987, the UN General Assembly organized the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, which is celebrated annually on 26 June. The decision was taken in December 1987 following the recommendation of a special International Conference, which adopted an appropriate plan for future activities in the fight against drug abuse. The main goal of the established event is to draw the attention of people around the world to the need to unite efforts to solve the problem of drug addiction.
According to the latest UN data, the number of people who use drugs ranges from 3% to 6.5% of the world's population. There are approximately 5 million drug users in Russia. In addition, our country occupies a leading place in the world in the use of the most dangerous drug substance - heroin. Every year from 30 to 40 thousand people die from drugs in the Russian Federation.
