Moscow clinics this year will start distributing free medication to drug addicts to treat overdoses, the Health Ministry's top drug specialist, Yevgeny Bryun, told local news website m24.ru.
“We'll be handing out medication and, if a drug addict suffers an overdose, someone can use it and save his life, and then take him into specialist care,” Bryun said Monday.
The medication will be handed out at drug treatment centers throughout the capital and will be free of charge, the report said.
Bryun said 3 percent of drug overdoses were lethal, adding they were most prevalent among young addicts because they lacked experience.
Almost a million young Russians have died from drug abuse in the last 10 years, and up to 70 percent of deaths between the ages of 15 and 34 are drug-related, according to Federal Drug Control Service estimates cited by the Interfax news agency in September last year.
Russia has about 7.5 million drug users, of whom 3 million abuse substances on a daily basis, the report said.
