#20 | October 23 - November 5, 1997  

by Mark Ames

A truly terrifying incident happened last week to a close acquaintance of mine.

He'd scored two grams of smack and made a straight B-line to a friend's house nearby. For the next six hours or so, the group of smacking-buddies binged themselves into a numb, groggy stupor. Three snorted, two jammed. They watched movies, talked (or rather drawled in half-sentences), nodded off in chairs... it was harmless fun by any standard.

By five in the morning, two of them -both expats-decided to leave for home. They stood out on Leninsky Prospekt trying to a flag a car down to get back to the center. No one stopped, perhaps because, as my friend put it, "I'm like you, Ames-they take me for a blackass."

Finally, one enterprising driver took a chance: he made an illegal U-turn to pick them up. They agreed on a price, then got in. As they headed towards the center, a militsia car pulled up beside them, on the passenger's side. The cops stared menacingly at my friend, then blew their horn and motioned for them to pull over. Right then, my friend realized that he was holding one and a half grams of china white-one ball in his inside coat pocket, and the other in the front pocket of his pants.

"I thought about pulling the shit out and dumping it on the floor of the car," he told me, "but I realized that they were probably watching my movements. I had to gauge which would be riskier. I just had to hope that they wouldn't haul me in and frisk me."

The driver got out and showed his documents. There was still hope they'd quickly get away. Then one cop came up to the side of the car and banged roughly on the backseat passenger's door. The guy in the backseat didn't have any smack on him, but he'd forgotten to bring his passport. He nervously got out of the car. That's when my friend's paranoia reached a peak: he thought, "Why did they pull everyone out of the car but me? Is this some kind of Soviet mental torture?"

To give the impression that he was a confident Westerner, he got out of the car himself and approached the cop, offering his passport. The cop asked him what he did in Moscow, and mocked his answers. He mocked his job, his citizenship, his bad Russian (my friend affected the bad Russian, hoping that naivete would put the cop off)... Then the cop noticed a minor fault in his visa, and said, "Davai v militsiu." That was it: they were taking both of them into the station. Where, for sure, they'd be frisked. And where, for sure, the smack would be found.

"My legs started shaking uncontrollably," my friend told me. "I kept this stupid American smile on my face, but my knees were like Shaggy's from Scooby Doo. I've never shaken that hard before."

If he'd been busted, it would mean nine months in Butirka waiting for a trial, and another two to three years time in a foreign labor camp in Mordova. The chances of getting tuberculosis in that time are about as high as the chances of getting raped in Folsom. Official statistics claim that ten percent of Russia's prison population has TB, but the real figure is far higher. No man, and particularly no milkfed Westerner, can possibly survive such an ordeal without serious and permanent damage to his health and mind. And all for what? For a completely victimless crime; for trying to momentarily relieve the pain and boredom of "reality" via a natural substance that happens to be less filthy, and more appealing to the senses, than alcohol and cigarettes. Alcohol: how many murders, rapes, assaults, auto accidents and the rest happen each year in Russia, or any country, because of alcohol? One estimate I heard is that up to a third of Russia's crimes are alcohol-related. Ah, but it's all so fun and whacky, all that alcoholism, isn't it?

I have since asked around what the sentence might be for someone carrying one and a half grams of heroin for personal use. The court in the Novocheryomushki region told the eXile that such a person would "sit for three years." Sergei Zabarin, a lawyer who is fighting for clarity and sanity in Russia's drug laws, told me that Russia's drug laws are unconstitutional, and yet he has several clients sitting in holding cells for carrying amounts even less than half a gram of heroin.

"It is uncivilized and inhumane," he told me. "But I don't have the money to fight it in the World Court."

The Russian criminal code separates drug offenses into three categories: small amounts for personal use, large amounts, and very large amounts obviously intended for sale. However, there has never been an official list published which spells out what a "small amount" is, although the Ministry of Health, which is in charge of naming that amount, has privately listed a "small amount" of heroin as .005 grams-in other words, about one microscopic granule, which could implicate frankly anyone who's ever bumped into a druggie. The obvious intention is that this gives wide leverage to the cops to bust who they want-and to extract massive bribes at whim.

"The Russian constitution forbids prosecuting a citizen for a crime that has not been properly disseminated through the media," Zabarin told me. "Since no one knows what a 'small amount' of heroin is, by our own constitution, they should not be prosecuted. However, I have one client who has sat in Matrosskaya Tishina for eight months after they found .4 grams of heroin on him. He's still waiting to hear his sentence."

Expats are not at all immune. I remember hearing about a black American who last year was caught with a gram of coke and sentenced to two years, but this has never been confirmed. The Chereyomushki court told the eXile that an American woman was busted in August at Sheremetyevo, having stuffed seven kilos of smack into her daughter's barbie dolls en route from Lima, via Moscow, to Ljublijana. It's hard to feel sorry for her, though: her bust has more to do with social Darwinism, weeding out the mongoloids, than anything else...

What happened to my friend? As they were about to put him into the back of the militsia car, he feigned surprise while masking his terror, and said, "Wait, why jail? Can't we just pay a fine?"

The militiaman's expression suddenly changed. He motioned my friend to follow him to the side of the street, then turned around and whispered, in English, "One khandred fifty."

My friend sighed in relief, but again feigned surprise and shock. "One hundred fifty? You mean, uh, sto pyatdesyat' tysich rublyei?"

"Da!" the militiaman sneered.

My friend shook his head, then pulled out the bills. It was business, that's all.

Never again will my friend leave his house with drugs in his pockets.

Nor will I.