麻豆约拍

In a special essay, Lucy Ash investigates how Russia and Ukraine tackle drug abuse - and what their different approaches mean for HIV rates and the number of drug injectors. In Russia today, the heroin substitute methadone, often used to try and get drug users' regimes under control, is banned and needle exchanges are hard to find, while many organisations trying to work with addicts have had their funds frozen, or are stigmatised for being tools of foreign influence. The Ukrainian approach has been more conciliatory until now, but can it survive amid the diplomatic and military crisis?

Photo: Bottles of the synthetic opioid Methadone are burnt during an operation by Russian Federal Drug Control Service officers in Simferopol on December 23, 2014 which destroyed nearly 30 kgs of the drug. (YURI LASHOV/AFP/Getty Images)