Anatolii Kornilov, “There is always a choice. You are stronger than you think.“
By: Shawn Mars
When I was a teenager, I first saw kids sniffing glue. I did not immediately realize it was glue. The kids, ages 10 to 12, looked lost but happy. They had small plastic bags in their hands with a murky liquid inside. We were walking in the park with my older sister when we met these kids. I remember how curious I was as a teenager to know why they were doing this; what for? My sister told me in horrifying detail how the brain is destroyed by even a tiny inhalation of toxic glue, and I felt scared and sorry for these kids. I was lucky to have an older sister, she always warned me against all kinds of dangers, but the faces of these kids, sniffing glue for years until I turned their heads-how did it come to this?
I grew up in Kazakhstan, in the small town of Taraz. All my youth and adolescence, I was surrounded by drug addicts. I did not have that much contact with them, but I saw them every day. I saw how they suffered in search of a dose, how they committed crimes and murders, and how they lost their humanity. As I grew older, my friends and girlfriends started offering me accessible drugs, which I knew I was afraid of, not wanting to become a drug addict. My mom was raising four kids alone, including me; my dad and little brother passed away early, and my mom stopped getting paid for seven months. Those were the hungry, crazy years, but I remember my mom trying to fill my schedule as much as possible, signing me up for karate, classical guitar, drama class, etc. I was a dreamer, but with a purpose; I controlled my emotions so I did not understand my friends when they offered me drugs to relax; I knew many jokes, we could play exciting games, and I did not want to cloud my mind and look like a drug addict, I was lucky with my upbringing. Many of my friends started doing light drugs in high school. When I left school to attend the Theater Academy in Russia, in St. Petersburg and returned a few years later to my small town of Taraz, I was surprised and saddened. The statistics stated that 50 percent of my friends had married or gotten married and completely immersed themselves in family, children, and hard work, and started drinking vodka regularly after work. The other 50 percent of my soft-drug friends switched to harder drugs, lost friends, and some went to jail for petty robberies and extortion to raise money for more. The situation was sad. About 40% of the drug market in Kazakhstan has seized psychoactive substances that kill a person in two or three years.
Photo Courtesy: Anatolii Kornilov
Psychoactive drugs, which are now easy to buy through social networks on the Internet or through messengers, are aggressively taking over Kazakhstan and literally killing hundreds and thousands of their users in a short time.
The problem is that chemical manufacturers of psychoactive drugs can change the substance’s chemical structure. It takes experts to prove that the substance is illegal because the drug manufacturers change its formula very slightly and get a new one, which, according to the laws, does not fall into the category of narcotic drugs, as it is not included in the lists of controlled and narcotic substances. The new drug has the same devastating effect on humans as its predecessor.
To prove that a new chemical compound belongs to a particular group of drugs, experts must conduct considerable research, which takes time. This is what drug traffickers use to get away with it.
“Last year, we had more than 60 arrests of drug addicts. All of them were examined, and it was concluded that it was not a narcotic substance for many of them. So, we must stop the prosecution. If a particular substance is not on the summary table of drugs in Kazakhstan, our hands and feet are tied. Let’s go,” says Yerlan Almagambetov, deputy head of the Anti-Drug Department.
The widespread distribution of synthetic drugs and the use of the Internet to sell them have become global problems. According to the latest UN data, 483 new psychoactive substances have been registered worldwide, about 60 in Kazakhstan and neighboring states.
Source:
https://ru.sputnik.kz/20190111/sinteticheskiye-narkotiki-kazakhstan-8827621.html
When I moved to Russia, I realized that drugs are used by desperate people, children from dysfunctional and low-income families, and well-paid people who do it for pleasure. Unfortunately, drug addiction statistics in Russia are worse than in Kazakhstan.
In 2020 the pandemic affected all sectors of the economy, but the situation has allowed drug traffickers to increase the number of drugs available. General nervousness, disorganization of teenagers and young people due to distance learning, loss of jobs, and attempts to generate income by creating and distributing drugs – all these factors have led to a sharp increase in drug trafficking in Russia and worldwide. Compared to 2012, the number of drugs seized from illicit trafficking in Russia has increased by more than 3 tons in 8 years. In 2020, it will be 35,600 kg. For comparison, this is about 20% of the global volume of seizures. The number of Russians who died in the 2020 pandemic from drug problems increased by 60% from the previous year, revealed Rosstat. Worldwide coronavirus leads to increased consumption of alcohol and drugs, experts noted.
In Russia, the problem of teenage drug use has taken on horrific proportions. Five years ago, a 16-year-old drug addict was a clinical rarity, but now adolescents make up a third of drug addicts seeking medical help.
The worst part is that drug use in today’s youth has become an everyday occurrence, one might even say a tradition. Today’s teenagers do not seem to use drugs that are considered obscene and unconventional. According to statistics, teenage drug addiction has become a real epidemic in the country. Data from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs show that 70% of drug users are adolescents and young adults. At least 56% of the boys and 20% of the girls have ever taken drugs or abused substances, and 45% of the boys and 18% of the girls are still doing so! Many high school students have a textbook on drug abuse at home and personal experiences with drug use.
Furthermore, these are teenagers not from regular high school but from the future intellectual elite of the country. Drugs are now sold quite openly and even distributed via the Internet. Furthermore, medicines containing narcotic substances can be bought in pharmacies without a prescription.
The number of deaths of children and adolescents from drug use has increased 2.5 times in five years (2017-2022). In addition, the number of drug crimes committed by minors has increased for the first time in four years in the last nine months. Ivan Gorbunov, head of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Control of Drug Trafficking, told this.
Source:
https://www.rbc.ru/economics/18/07/2021/60f1b7cc9a79472c99206f4d https://dgp58dzm.ru/information/health-schools/narkomaniya-sredi-podrostkov https://gov.cap.ru/home/77/obrazov/hodarygim/htmls/narkotik.htm
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5716038
When I entered the State University of Film and Television in St. Petersburg, I was 23 years old.
St. Petersburg is a beautiful city, with a high standard of living and salaries, and the cultural center of Russia. However, I still noticed that among my acquaintances, there is more and more talk about drug addicts in St. Petersburg, not to mention smaller cities, where salaries and social programs are much lower. In my second year, I actively started shooting anti-drug social ads; one such work, “Friends,” won at several festivals and received prestigious diplomas in the social centers against drugs, where I showed my social videos and conducted a master class for teenagers.
Diploma for the first place in the category of the best anti-drug and healthy lifestyle promotion videos in the competition “Kupchino – chooses” Letter of appreciation for participation in the All-Russian competition for the creation and placement of anti-drug social advertising and promotion of a healthy lifestyle in the North-Western Federal District.
Nomination “For the best video on anti-drug propaganda and promotion of a healthy lifestyle Certificate of Merit from the Administration of the Central District, Department of Youth Policy, Physical Culture and Sports.
Participation in the competition to create and place anti-drug social advertising and promote a healthy lifestyle.
After graduating from the St. Petersburg State Institute of Cinema and Television, I continued my research and fight against drugs. I created a television program, “No Names,” where brave guests talked about their journey, how they overcame their addiction, and how they went to defeat drugs.
Photo Courtesy: Anatolii Kornilov
One of the documentaries – an interview – garnered more than 17,000 views on my YouTube channel.
The problem of drug use and distribution in the United States.
Drug overdose deaths have reached an all-time high, devastating families and communities. Over 104,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the 12 months ending September 2021. We mourn these losses and pledge to continue our work to save lives.
According to the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 40.3 million people aged 12 and older had a substance use disorder last year. Meanwhile, more than four out of five Americans who need treatment for illicit drug use are not receiving it. Mental health and substance use disorder services have been under-resourced for too long, and the COVID-19 pandemic has put an even more significant burden on the system. The U.S. bailout plan provided nearly $4 billion to these services and was the first contribution to support vital interventions.
Source:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.html
Prescription drug abuse is the fastest-growing drug problem in the country. Despite a marked decline in the use of some illegal drugs, such as cocaine, data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show that nearly a third of people age 12 and older who first used drugs in 2009 started with nonmedical use of a prescription drug.1 According to the same study, more than 70 percent of people who abuse prescription pain relievers got them from friends or family members. About 5 percent got them from a drug dealer or the Internet.2 The most recent Monitoring the Future study, the nation’s most extensive study of drug use among young people, found that prescription drugs are the second most common category after marijuana.3 In our military, illicit drug use among active duty service members increased from 5 to 12 percent in three years from 2005 to 2008, mainly due to prescription drug abuse.
Although several classes of prescription drugs are currently abused, this action plan focuses primarily on the growing and often deadly problem of prescription opioid abuse. Prescriptions for opioid painkillers, some of the most potent drugs, have increased dramatically in recent years. From 1997 to 2007, the number of prescription opioids per person in the United States increased from 74 milligrams to 369 milligrams, a 402 percent increase.5 In addition 2000, retail pharmacies issued 174 million prescriptions for opioids; by 2009, 257 million prescriptions were issued, a 48 percent increase.6 Moreover, opioid overdoses, once almost always related to heroin use, now increasingly occur due to prescription painkiller abuse.
Source:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/policy-and-research/rx_abuse_plan.pdf
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 92,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2020, up from about 70,000 in 2017. Over the same period, fatal overdoses rose from 21.7 to 28.3 per 100,000 people. Despite this increase, in subsequent Pew Research Center surveys, the percentage of Americans who say drug addiction is a severe problem in their local community dropped by seven percentage points from 42 percent in 2018 to 35 percent in 2021.
Moreover, in a separate Center poll conducted in early 2022, drug addiction ranked lowest among the 18 priorities the president and Congress must address this year. Between 2017 and 2020, fatal drug overdoses increased in the country’s urban, suburban, and rural areas.
Nevertheless, in subsequent Center surveys, the percentage of Americans who say drug addiction is a severe problem declined in all three types of areas. This decline ranged from 10 percentage points in urban areas (from 43% in 2018 to 33% in 2021) to 5 points in suburban areas (from 39% to 34%). Public concern about drug abuse has declined even in areas with high rates of drug overdose deaths. In areas of the country where drug overdose death rates were above average in 2017 and 2020, the percentage of Americans who say drug addiction is a severe problem in their community dropped by 8 points between 2018 and 2021, from 45% to 37%. Almost the same pattern is seen in areas where drug overdose death rates rose more than the median between 2017 and 2020. About 44% of Americans in these areas said drug abuse was a severe problem in their neighborhood in 2018, but that share dropped to 38% in 2021.
Source:
Solutions
Here are a few ways to minimize prescription drug abuse among youth: Education: One in four teens believes prescription drugs can be used as a study aid, and nearly a third of parents say they believe attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs can improve a child’s academic performance or test scores, even if they do not have ADHD. Parents, children, and prescribers should be aware of the effects of prescription drugs on the developing brain. Safe storage and disposal of medications: Two-thirds of teens who abused painkillers last year say they got them from family and friends, including from home medicine cabinets, so it is important to keep medications safe in the home, according to the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. Safely storing and disposing of medications reduces the potential for easy access. Prescription drug monitoring: Many people are urging doctors and pharmacies to monitor better how (and how often) medications are prescribed. Doctors are more willing to dispense prescription painkillers than they were a decade ago, and pharmacists are reportedly not checking prescription drug registries, which help identify potential overprescribing and abuse.
I would also like to talk about my anti-drug plan in fiction. I am currently studying in Los Angeles, a beautiful city full of creativity. However, I have also noticed that there are a lot of homeless drug addicts and people distributing drugs on the street.
I wrote a feature film script about supporting loved ones, responsibility, choice, and willpower. This heartfelt human story will help the audience make the right choice; my future film will impact American society and this problem.
The story is about two brothers. Younger brother Davix takes his older brother for a walk in a JC wheelchair disguised as a drug dealer’s walk. Now of distribution, they are apprehended by the police. JC fakes epilepsy, and the police, fearing the consequences of the arrest, release the brothers. Davix takes his older brother home and is glad they were not apprehended. JC tries to reason with Davix, and a conflict erupts between them, during which JC tries to hit Davix but falls from his wheelchair.
JC asks him not to use drugs anymore, but Davix wants to live brightly and is tired of living in a poor house with his disabled brother. He owes money to a local drug dealer and believes he will never be a good basketball player. DK recalls that he became disabled because he stood up for Davix in a difficult moment but injured his spine during a fight. Davis helps his brother up. DK tries to prove that Davix can succeed in basketball despite his addiction, debts to drug dealers, and problems with the police. He reminisces about his brother’s success in basketball and that their parents are gone; they shake hands and make peace, at which point Davicks gets a text message and runs out into the street. JC watches him from the window. Davix walks to a black car with tinted windows. JC is very upset. A man hands Davix a package from the black car, but the younger brother refuses to take it; then, men come out of the car and start beating Davix. JC yells out the window, he asks them not to hit his brother, but no one hears him. At some point, the drug dealer and his friends get in the car and drive away. Davix brings off the ground, limps to the basketball hoop, and throws the ball at him. JC is happy for his brother and cries.
