Russia's Federal Drug Control Service said Monday that the number of Russians dying from drug overdoses has nearly tripled since 2012, reaching up to 100,000 a year.
Olga Mishina, deputy head of the Federal Drug Control Service, said teenagers and young adults were most vulnerable to drug problems, Interfax reported.
Young people start experimenting with narcotics from the age of 11 or 12, and about 8 million people in the country are drug users, she said.
"Among the 108,700 people convicted of drug-related crimes in 2013, 66 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29, and another 2,100 were minors," Mishina was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Mishina said that 250,000 drug-related crimes are investigated and 1 billion drug sales are recorded in the country every year, Interfax reported.