Russia's youth is caught up in one of the worst health crises in the country's history, with unprecedented numbers of children and teenagers turning to cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs, Russia's interior minister has warned. Rashid Nurgaliyev blamed the situation on the virtual collapse of the Russian health service in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell, and on the economic misery and moral crisis that has affected the country ever since.
He said that four million Russian teenagers were drug users (of a total of 144 million) and that one million of those were hardened addicts. The average age of drug users has fallen from 17 to 11 in recent years, he added, and addiction rates in the young are now 2.5 times higher than those in the adult population.
Deaths from drugs in minors have also skyrocketed, by a factor of 42 compared with the 1980s. Many of the affected children live on the streets, driven out of their homes by violent alcoholic parents.
Mr Nurgaliyev noted that Russia was home to 700 000 orphans, a number higher than at any other time since the second world war and a state of affairs that leaves them particularly vulnerable. "Today we are living through a third wave of child homelessness, following those of the civil war and the second world war," he told a ministerial meeting.
Poorly funded antismoking campaigns also seem to be having no real effect. Alexander Chuchalin, director of Russia's institute of pulmonology, warned that large numbers of children are taking up smoking as young as 8 years old. He said that 10% of Russian schoolboys and 5% of schoolgirls smoke and that 30% of all children smoke in Russia's big cities. Russia's children do not, however, have viable role models in the medical profession. Official figures from the World Health Organization show that 60% of Russian doctors smoke.
Experts say that alcohol misuse in the young is also a serious problem. Ekaterina Lakhova, a Russian MP specialising in child health issues, says that 40% of schoolchildren regularly drink alcohol. Russian boys are particularly prone to tobacco, substance, and alcohol misuse, a fact that means average male life expectancy stands at just 58, 15 years lower than for women.
The Russian government believes that the health crisis threatens the country's future but concedes that it does not have the resources to tackle it on its own. "We must unite the efforts of all state and social organisations with those of human rights groups and citizens to resolve this problem," said Mr Nurgaliyev. The crisis is expected to eat into Russia's population of 144 million. By mid-century the United Nations believes it will have fallen to 112 million.