Anti-Drug Efforts Pushed in Soviet Asian Republic
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MOSCOW — Uzbekistan’s top governing body has ordered local officials to do more to stamp out drug abuse in the Central Asian republic, according to the Uzbek Communist Party newspaper.
The Aug. 1 edition of Pravda Vostoka, which arrived in Moscow on Tuesday, said Uzbekistan’s Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the republic’s nominal parliament, singled out officials in the Dzhizak region in the east of the republic for particular criticism.
The officials have not given enough help to agencies fighting drug abuse, alcoholism and drunkenness, and health organizations are also guilty of sloppy work, the daily said.
The Presidium ordered Uzbek government ministries to take firm measures to eliminate production, distribution and consumption of drugs.
The official press has begun to identify drug abuse as a pressing social problem in the Soviet Union. The Central Asian republics grow poppies, which are valuable because they can produce morphine, but which are also used to make heroin.
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