Why in the vast majority of cases, it is young people who become mortgagers

Often on the bait of recruiters fall provincials who came to the big city to get a profession

Fast money, free schedule, complete anonymity. Agree, tempting conditions for a provincial student living from scholarship to scholarship. There are so many temptations, I want everything at once. So he took a bite. In dreams - fashionable clothes, cafes, clubs, the latest iPhone, in reality - a week of adrenaline and a loud knock on the door of drug control employees. The price of easy money was criminal. About this, and also about who and why falls into such traps - in the review "SG".

Drawing by Oleg KARPOVICH Pawn in someone else's game In the vast majority of cases, it is young people, and sometimes children, who are the pawns of the harmful potion. For example, I recently read the news: employees of the drug control of the Frunze police department detained a 14-year-old schoolboy who was performing a test task at a network drug market. The boy said he used the ban himself. Most often, these are the bets of death sellers. The drug business itself today is a mixture of cyber and drug crime. Most transactions take place on the global network, and law enforcement agencies increasingly have to deal with inventive criminals who are constantly changing recruitment strategies, coming up with new traps for potential “expendable material”, like an eighth-grader from a crime chronicle.

Often on the bait of recruiters fall provincials who came to the big city to get a profession. Employees of the capital drug control detained in the summer 16-year-old student of one of the colleges. He was a resident of the Minsk region, who had more than 500 grams of hashish and about 200 grams of mephedrone. “Vacancy” teenager found in the messenger. On the instructions of the curator, he took wholesale lots, packaged them in the forest belt and made bookmarks. Surprisingly, most of the caches he had time to equip right on the way to school, so as not to be late for class. The result is one: instead of classrooms, he was waiting for a courtroom and a sentence.

Another 15-year-old was promised an obscene amount for “services.” Recruiters took advantage of a difficult family situation. The boy really wanted to help his parents raise money for the treatment of his grandmother. Details of the work were not revealed immediately, but soon, when the moment came, the teenager had to choose. And he signed up for a criminal adventure. He worked for about three weeks until one of the vigilantes reported suspicious behavior. This was followed by arrest and criminal liability. Short "career" In 2025, law enforcement agencies stopped the activities of 39 online drug stores. Over the past year, 237 websites promoting banned substances have been restricted.

Andrey Kudritsky, Deputy Head of the Main Directorate for Drug Control and Combating Human Trafficking of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, noted:

- Investors are most often young people aged 20 to 35 years, as a rule, not working. In search of earnings, many respond to advertisements on the Internet, including in social networks and instant messengers, which at first glance may seem harmless. As an example, work as a courier or even offers to get a job as a husband for an hour. Next, recruiters explain the real essence of the work that will have to be done. Here a person has a choice: to cross the line of the law or not.

Police officers, conducting preventive conversations with young people, always remind that everyone who responds to questionable proposals or consciously seeks them, should understand: one bookmark can cost the life of another person, even several. And if someone moral side does not stop, then it is necessary to think about the inevitable punishment. The work experience of the mortgager is minimal: from 3 days to 1 month. Most of them are exposed on the first attempt to earn money.

The fight against this evil is not weakened and is conducted at the highest level.

- Today, young people have become more thoughtful about responding to dubious offers of easy earnings, but the risks of involvement in criminal activities related to drug trafficking remain. Many associate with such activities rashly and do not fully understand the consequences. Some people take risks consciously. We try to identify both these categories in a timely manner and conduct targeted prevention with them, Andrei Kudritsky added. What if your child? Over the past 11 years, the number of drug control crimes in Belarus has steadily decreased. Thus, in 2025, almost two times fewer drug crimes were registered than in 2014 (7319 and 3786, respectively). Criminal liability for crimes related to drug trafficking is 6 times less than for minors (2014 – 371, 2025 – 57). In the organization of health care with poisoning with psychotropic substances delivered much less citizens, including adolescents (2014 — 223, 2025 — 12). And yet it's too early to relax.

For illegal drug sales, in accordance with Article 328 of the Criminal Code, liability comes from 14 years and provides for a punishment of up to 20 years in prison, and in the event of the death of a consumer - up to 25 years.

Is the punishment too harsh for young people who often do not understand what they are getting into? Sometimes in chat rooms resent the compassionate defenders who crossed out their youth mortgagers. Not at all. Let’s look at the world experience. For example, Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam practice the death penalty or life imprisonment for drug trafficking. In Western countries, the maximum term of imprisonment for participation in drug trafficking can be from 15 to 20 years in prison. That is, as much as in Belarus. Crimes that take lives and undermine the health of the nation require decisive action. The above statistics show that these measures are bearing fruit. And sympathizers should think: what if tomorrow your quiet, promising and healthy child wants to try on the recommendation of an authoritative classmate "fun" pill? The illicit sale of drugs is understood as both reimbursable and gratuitous transfer to other persons, which can be carried out through sale, gift, exchange, payment of debt, lending and other means. Currently, the sale includes the fact of the transfer of coordinates with the location of the drug caches. In the case of voluntary delivery of a drug to law enforcement agencies and active assistance in the detection or suppression of a drug crime, the legislation provides for exemption from criminal liability.

dulevich@sb.by