MINSK, 18 February (BelTA) – Belarusian law enforcement should adequately respond to emerging drug challenges, Belarus Prime Minister Sergei Rumas said as he addressed a session of the Council of Ministers' Presidium to discuss measures to counter illegal drug trafficking, to prevent drug abuse and to ensure social rehabilitation of drug addicts, BelTA has learned.
“Given the existing drug threat, we are dealing with the situation effectively, but, unfortunately, attempts to import banned substances and to use Belarus as a transit country never stop. Consequently, the law enforcement should respond adequately to the emerging challenges and threats,” Sergei Rumas noted.
The prime minister also stressed that the anti-drug efforts are not the focus of law enforcement only. “More and more emphasis is made on prevention. However, the preventive measures do not always correspond to the situation and are not always successful. The president has drawn attention to this. The current situation necessitates revising the methods of work from the point of view of both economic and social effectiveness, and public perception,” he said.
Drug addicts are not involved in social and economic processes. “Unfortunately, there is no universal cure for drug addiction. But there are approaches that help bring someone ‘out of shadows' and back to normal life,” Sergei Rumas noted. He believes that effective treatment and rehabilitation system is also important. “But due to complexity and multidimensional aspects of the problem these things are not enough to help people get rid of addiction. Returning to drugs is inevitable if patients are left on their own after therapy, and if they are unemployed and are not socialized,” the prime minister stated.
On 18 February the Council of Ministers' Presidium considered the results of the efforts to counter illegal drug trafficking, both in terms of law enforcement and in terms of the social and economic effectiveness of preventive work.
