Language focus

1. Find the words or phrases in the text which have a similar meaning to the following.

• to earn enough money to survive (case 1);

• confined to bed due to illness (case 2);

• depressed (case 5);

• something which brings a person back to health (future A);

• to continue to use (future C);

• to isolate from (future F).

2. Some of the language in the notes you have read is very colloquial. Work out what the following words and word-combinations mean in the context they occur.

• dropped out (case 1);

• pad (case 4);

• one-night stands (case 4);

• for kicks (cases 4 and 5).

3. Match the words with their definitions. Translate them into Russian/Belarusian.

addict	any of a group of sedative drugs
cannabis	a state of being bored
pad (sl)	a state of discouragement, dissatisfaction
boredom	a hemp plant; any of various drugs made from the dried leaves and flowers of hemp plant
frustration	a place where somebody lives
barbiturates	a person who is unable to stop taking dugs, alcohol

4. Suggest synonyms of the following words and word-combinations, make use of the functional vocabulary of the previous sections.

to rely on sth,

continual,

to trick sb,

to be depressed,

for pleasure and inspiration,

to cut off from.

Speech activities

1. Here are two more typical cases. Choose one and write what you think his future is likely to be.

Age 55. Doctor, unmarried, lives alone above his surgery. For a long time has been unhappy about being greatly over-worked under lousy conditions. As a doctor has easy access to dangerous drugs. Two years ago, when depressed, took morphine. After that turned to morphine more and more often whenever things seemed too much. Now dependent on it.	His future:
Age 26. Professional racing cyclist. Lives at home with wife. At first did badly as professional. Decided to quit but friends persuaded him to try stimulants. First tried caffeine then amphetamines. Started winning races. Now always uses stimulants for racing.	His future:

2. Discuss these drug cases with the rest of the group. How many of them would be typical of your own country? For more ideas and new information read the supplementary texts “Drug Abuse is Spreading Fast”, “Alarm over Teenagers Trying Drugs”, “Clubbers Grow Rich on Drug Profits”.

   reading two

Read the text and focus your attention on the changes in the drug policies of most European countries.

Europe: Drugs – Adapting to New Realities

Drugs – both legal and illegal – have accompanied humans since the beginning of civilization. But approaches on how to deal with them today continue to differ. Many EU states are in the process of changing their drug policies – and there is now a clear trend toward greater emphasis on education and treatment, rather than repression. In Eastern Europe, the rapid opening of borders accompanied by economic hardship adds a double challenge to drafting effective drug policies. Correspondent Jeremy Bransten examines the issues and the reality of drugs in both Western and Eastern Europe, how policies have changed and what lessons can be learned.

As an increasing segment of Europe's population experiments with different types of drugs, European governments are also experimenting with different drug policies. Within the European Union drug laws – unlike other statutes – are not subject to harmonization.

Statistically, in each EU member, tobacco and alcohol kill thousands more people each year than do illicit drugs. But policymakers are nonetheless worried by the opening of new trade routes – bringing with it international organized crime – the availability of new narcotics, as well as the emergence of new diseases that can be spread by drug users such as AIDS and hepatitis.

The trends are clear. According to the EU’s European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, since the mid-1980s, illicit drug use of all types has increased across Europe, despite the fact that arrests for the sale and possession of drugs are also sharply up. Law-enforcement officials estimate that despite the best efforts of police, only 10 to 30 per cent of illicit drug shipments arc ever interdicted.

The 10-year period from 1985 to 1995 also saw increases in the numbers of drug-related deaths in most European countries.

It was the emergence of diseases such as AIDS and HIV, which can be transmitted by shared needles among intravenous drug users, that prompted many European countries to take a new look at their drug policies. That trend has accelerated and since the mid 1990s, several states have adopted new policies focused more on treatment and prevention rather than interdiction and prosecution. Alexis Goosdeel, a drug policy expert at the EU’s monitoring center, explains:

“In the last couple of years, you’ve had four or six EU member-states who have drawn up national strategies on drugs. If you take, for instance, the Spanish one, the strategy of the United Kingdom and recently the Portuguese national policy, they are more well-balanced national strategies than before. This means that before it was mainly addressing some legal enforcement needs and issues, in order to reduce the supply of drugs. Now we know – it is an observation we can make almost everywhere – that if you do and promote only the fight against drugs, it is not effective and therefore a lot of member-states have balanced their strategies.”

Some of those policies have already born fruit. In the case of HIV transmission rates, the establishment of needle exchange programs for addicts has been a clear success, preventing the further spread of the disease. Where those programmes are absent, as in many East European states, HIV incidence continues to rise sharply. In Russia, for example, where the UN's World Health Organization, or WHO, reports that HIV’s spread is mostly driven by intravenous drug users, the first HIV cases among addicts were only noticed in 1996, in the port of Kaliningrad. In just four years, the epidemic has spread to over 30 cities.

The difficulty is that in other areas, drawing a direct correlation between the rate of drug use and specific prevention or enforcement programmes is nearly impossible. In other words, it is hard to measure the individual effectiveness of different programmes on influencing people to avoid or quit drugs. This has allowed politicians to use the drug issue to advance their own goals. Leif Lenke,

a Swedish expert on drug policy, says this is an unfortunate trend:

“When you find this kind of politicization of drug policy, you have difficulty seeing whether it's a question of effectiveness that you ask for – or if it's a question of party political rhetoric.”

The incidence of drug use depends on many factors – among them, as Sweden discovered the rate of youth unemployment. This is a particular problem in much of Eastern Europe. Another important factor is whether or not a country lies on a specific drug route, such as the so-called Silk Route from Central Asia or the Balkan Route, which winds from Turkey through Central Europe.

Because of each country's specific conditions, EU drug monitor Goosdeel says the key to at least partial success is to educate people and, at the level of government, to maintain flexible policies that are periodically revised. He advises countries to adapt specific programs that have worked in other states, but says that adopting a one-size-fits-all policy is as ineffective as the just say no to drugs approach still favoured by some social conservatives:

“I think what is important is to try to explore. What are the things which were wrong? Or maybe things were right but the situation has changed? And then to see, from what we have learned from the experience, how could we redefine our objectives for the next four years, for instance?”

The EU monitoring group notes in its annual report on drugs in Europe that new substances continue to appear on the market That's why it is important to stay on top of trends, change policies when needed and above all, remain educated. Goosdeel says that in his personal opinion, speaking as a parent, it is all quite basic:

“I think that we need to learn to live in a world with drugs – whatever the substance. And we know that with the prodigies of chemistry, there are so many new things. I think that what we need to do is, first, to be able to detect the new trends, to detect the new substances because some of them can be lethal substances, or very toxic substances; this is first. Second, what's required is that we need to teach ourselves and our children to live in such a world. I mean, the day my daughter is going to a party, what will I do? Will I stay together with her during the whole party? I don't think it is feasible.”

Jeremy Bransten

Functional vocabulary

adapt v	приспосабливаться
AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome)	СПИД
availability n	наличие, доступность
bear fruit	приносить плоды
draft v	составлять, разрабатывать

death toll	список убитых/погибших
drug-dealer n	наркоторговец
drug –trafficking n	торговля наркотиками, наркотрафик
drug-shipment n	поставка наркотиков
policy maker n	стратег
emerge v	появляться, возникать
emergence n	выход, появление
hepatitis n	гепатит
HIV n	ВИЧ инфекция
incidence n	распространение, число случаев
interdict v, n	запрещать, запрет
interdiction n	запрещение
law-enforcement n	надзор за соблюдением закона
law-enforcement officials n	сотрудники правоохранительных органов
lethal adj	смертельный
transmit v	передавать (ся)

Language focus