Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin chaired the regional anti-drug committee meeting. This was attended by the members of the State Boundary Commission (headed by the head of the Federal Drug Control Service Vladimir Kalanda). Kalanda said the main aim of their coming to the region was to look into the regional anti-drug committees’ performance as well as to propose a set of specific measures to make their job more efficient.

The spokesperson for the Governor reports the region is home to a major drug trafficking artery starting in Afghanistan and gets some inflow of drugs from Troitsk, Magnitogorsk, and Kartaly into the bargain. The regional law-enforcement agencies carried out about a hundred operations aimed at detecting and preventing drug-related crimes such as smuggling, for instance, with confiscating over 40 kilos of drugs. The authorities’ drug database comprises over 5,000 people on file, which makes the information exchange more efficient.

Petr Sumin said the problem could only be solved through the joined efforts of the authorities of all levels, law-enforcement agencies, and the citizens themselves.

‘Drugs and terrorism are the greatest threats to the security of the state and society. We can only stop this plague of the twenty-first century together,’ he noted.