MOSCOW, May 21 (RIA Novosti) - According to human rights advocates, about 32,000 prisoners serving their sentence for keeping drugs can be released after the Russian government's resolution determining the size of one-time drug dose is adopted. This is the opinion that Oleg Zykov, a member of the Human Rights Commission under the Russian president, expressed at a press conference on Friday.
At present, 65,000 people are serving their sentence for illegal drug trafficking in Russia, with only 25,000 of them punished for drug sales, while the others are common drug addicts, said Zykov.
In his opinion, the totally repressive measures in Russia's drug policy were not targeted against drug smugglers but common drug addicts. He added that the majority of drug addicts who landed in prison and by the time they were free, they had close ties with the criminal world and became criminals too.
Russia's plenipotentiary for human rights Vladimir Lukin opined that the adopted government resolution mostly met the general European norms in the fight against drug addiction.
