Please cite this article in press as: Zabransky, T., et al. Post-Soviet Central Asia: A summary of the drug situation. International Journal of Drug Policy (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2014.05.004 ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model DRUPOL-1385; No. of Pages 9 International Journal of Drug Policy xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Drug Policy j ourna l h om epage: www.elsevier.com/locate/drugpo Research Paper Post-Soviet Central Asia: A summary of the drug situation Tomas Zabransky a,b,∗ , Viktor Mravcik a,b,c , Ave Talu a,d , Ernestas Jasaitis a,e a ResAd – Research and Development in Drug Epidemiology and Policy, Prague, Czech Republic b Department of Addictology, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague and General University Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic c National Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Czech Republic d Department of Public Health, University of Tartu, Estonia e Drug Control Department under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, Lithuanian REITOX National Focal Point, Lithuania a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 25 November 2013 Received in revised form 2 May 2014 Accepted 9 May 2014 a b s t r a c t Background: The paper aims to provide a snapshot of the drug situation in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan using the EU methodology of “harmonised indicators of drug epidemiology.” Methods: Most of the data reported here were gathered and analysed within the framework of the EU-funded CADAP project in 2012. Together with members of CADAP national teams, we conducted extraction from the databases of national institutions in the field of (public) health and law enforcement, issued formal requests for the provision of specific information to national governmental authorities, and obtained national grey literature in Russian. In specific cases, we leaned on the expert opinions of the national experts, gathered by means of simple online questionnaires or focus group. In the rather scarce cases where peer-reviewed sources on the specific topics exist, it is used for comparisons and discussion. Results: All the post-Soviet Central Asian countries lack information on drug use in the general popu- lation. School surveys are relatively well developed in Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan benefited from an international survey project on health in schools organised by private donors in 2009. For Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the most recent available data on drug use in the school population are from 2006 and as such are of little relevance. Problem drug use is widespread in Central Asia and estimates of its prevalence are available for all four countries. All the post-Soviet Central Asian countries use a rather outdated system of narcological registers as the only source of data on drug users who are treated (and those investigated by the police), which was inherited from Soviet times. The availability of treatment is very low in all the countries reported on here except Kyrgyzstan; opioid substitution treatment (OST) was introduced first in Kyrgyzstan; Kazakhstan and Tajikistan are piloting their OST programmes but the coverage is extremely low, and in Uzbekistan the OST pilot programme has been abolished. HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections are concentrated in injecting drug users (IDUs) in Central Asia, with the situation in Kazakhstan having stabilised; HIV is on the increase among Kyrgyz IDUs. The sharp decrease in HIV and VHC seroprevalence among IDUs in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan still awaits an explanation. The system for monitoring of fatal drug overdoses needs substantial improvement in all the countries reported on here. Overall mortality studies of drug users registered in the narcological registers were performed in Uzbek- istan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan; the highest excess mortality among registered drug users was found in Uzbekistan, and in all three countries, it was substantially higher for women than men. The seizures of illegal drugs are by far the highest in Kazakhstan; however, wild-growing cannabis represents 90% of these seizures. Uzbekistan was the country with the highest number of drug arrests. In Kazakhstan, after the decriminalisation of drug use in 2011, the number of reported drug-related offences dropped to below 50% of the figure for the previous year. Conclusion: The drug situation monitoring system in the four post-Soviet countries of Central Asia still needs substantial improvement. However, in its current state it is already able to generate evidence that is useful for the planning of effective national and regional drug policies, which would be of the utmost importance in the forthcoming years of the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force from Afghanistan. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Addictology, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague and General University Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic. Tel.: +420 603451103; fax: +420 2 24965035. E-mail address: twz@resad.cz (T. Zabransky). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2014.05.004 0955-3959/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. 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