Adv. Lyubomira Minkova to FACTS: Fentanyl could hit Bulgaria as an epidemic

After the tragedy in Blagoevgrad, in which a 16-year-old girl lost her life after falling from the fifth floor of an apartment building, and another underage boy was found with serious injuries, society has once again turned its attention to the worrying problem of drug use among adolescents. Young people were detained in the case, and the investigation is examining different versions - from an incident under the influence of psychoactive substances to a possible crime. According to the information so far, evidence of drug use has been found in the apartment where a gathering of young people was held, and investigators are working to clarify all the circumstances surrounding the tragedy. The case has sparked a serious public debate about the effectiveness of state policy against drugs, the role of institutions, criminal legislation, prevention among young people and the responsibility of society. Lawyer Lyubomira Minkova spoke to FACTI about these issues.

- Adv. Minkova, why has the focus of law enforcement agencies shifted from drug dealers to users and addicts over the past two decades?
- A lot can be said on the subject, but if I had to list in some short interconnected order why it has come to the point that today in some courts, drug addicts are still being brought to trial, holding a single cigarette of "marijuana" worth even a few eurocents, some facts should really be cited. The first are from 2000, when I became an investigator, and the last - from 2026, when I am already a lawyer.
In 2000, heroin was publicly known as a sure killer and self-destructor of health and psyche. Its value was extremely high, and cocaine was some kind of symbol from the movies that no ordinary person could afford to buy because it was extremely expensive. The criminal groups that mainly produced heroin and grew marijuana were few, and the application of special intelligence tools to them in full was very simplified. Almost every police department had a representative - an employee of the GDBOP, and he monitored the operational situation in order to piece together the puzzle until the individuals were caught at the time of sale.
Back then, the goal was to bring to justice quickly and always under the threat of a large prison sentence any person, regardless of whether they had a recidivist past, who had sold drugs to someone. Drug users and addicts were important witnesses, and they themselves were perceived as victims of organized criminals. I have never asked myself, as an investigator, whether it is important to bring to justice a person who, due to his personal tragedy, has become so addicted that he cannot stand before me without trembling and groaning, but rather I have felt anger that some unscrupulous repeat offender has taken advantage of the young man's weakness.


But then, the state authorities themselves did not aim to constantly list hollow statistics to the public - the number of detainees, the number of convicted, the amount seized in tons and kilograms.

It's just that in the world without the Internet, we worked quietly on our assignments, and there were many more clinics for addicts and they operated good methadone and other treatment programs.
All of us from this generation in 2000, around the age of 30, lost our classmates, friends or neighbors to a heroin overdose in a short time. As a person, I was constantly afraid of what would happen if I tried heroin, because just one dose is enough to make you addicted - indeed, only one, and the next one must be double.
In the following years, with many opportunities to travel outside Bulgaria, the groups that make a living from this type of activity "improved" their organizational structures and increased enormously in number. Thus, using increasingly modern methods of "fishing" - a supposedly familiar person tells you in a disco: "Drink this and you will fly to the skies", and seconds later you feel yourself saying: "Yes, I want to be happy and cool like the others".
Then you fly into a world of hallucinations, and you have drunk a tiny pill with a chemical designed to break down brain cells. Drugs and chemical combinations have become hundreds.

Every drug used in human medicine for pain, with the appropriate “chemist“, has been turned into a cheap, fast stimulant with tons of poisons that instantly create a feeling of omnipotence, endless joy, happiness and self-confidence, even immortality, attacking all resistant brain cells.

The "multiplication" of drug manufacturers, the transformation of every poor and unfortunate child into a "cook" of killer pills and powders, led to the creation of a huge, uncontrollable market, which, due to numerous transformations in various structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, could not be controlled.
Today, all types of drugs are ordered over the Internet and come from all over the world. Finding the manufacturer and distributor requires effective international cooperation, a highly prepared structure for computer tracking and, in general, a large state resource.
That is why statistics have blurred the problem. The punishment for possession and sale of a narcotic substance in the Criminal Code has become almost the same. Easy capture and conviction of the consumer saves effort, but provides data for statistics that consider drug sellers and addicted, sick people as the same inanimate objects.
The state, unfortunately, chose the easy option after it could not control the huge drug market. He simply decided to report any number to the public, and that is why addicts became the most common defendants with the promise of small sentences, and drug dealers, due to the cumbersome and slow process - outright white-collar businessmen.

- Is it necessary to change the Criminal Code so that a clearer distinction is made between addicted users and persons who produce and distribute narcotics? How effective is the current penal policy towards young people caught with narcotics for personal use?
- It is necessary to adopt a new Criminal Code, because the deficiencies are in all its norms. The current law dates back to 1968 and has already been rewritten piece by piece thousands of times. A normative act created in times when penal principles were based on the need to preserve law and order in socialist society cannot be effective today, no matter how new norms in the context of the contemporary need to regulate current social relations are adopted.
I will give you an example - the criminal liability under the main composition for the production, processing, possession for the purpose of distribution or distribution of high-risk narcotic substances is imprisonment from one to six years and a fine of two thousand to ten thousand leva, and for the acquisition and possession of the same substances it is from one to six years and a fine of two thousand to ten thousand leva, i.e. absolutely the same.
There is a lack of sufficiently binding practice of the Supreme Court of Cassation, and for years, which would set any exemplary criteria for the insignificance of the specific case. This is how it turns out that in Bulgaria you can see thousands of different court decisions on the issue of what quantity of a narcotic substance can be accepted as such for personal use and what, even if it is not for sale, due to the many doses it contains, is grounds for the court to sentence a severely drug addict to a large prison sentence.

Imagine the absurdity of the situation,

that in the Criminal Code of March 2000 for the crimes under Art. 354a, para. 1 of the Criminal Code, concerning the acquisition, sale and distribution of high-risk narcotic substances, a prison sentence of ten to fifteen years and a fine of one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand leva was provided, while the current para. 3 of the same article, which provides for equal liability for persons possessing high-risk narcotic substances with those who sell them, then had the following content: „A person who is addicted to narcotic substances or their analogues shall not be punished if the quantity he acquires, stores, holds or transports is in a quantity indicating that it is intended for single use.“
I think that only this comparison fully answers the questions, because the assumption of equal treatment of people addicted to narcotics with those who produce narcotics in order to bring profit to someone and make someone else sick and addicted has led to the current tragic results, which scream for the need to change the Criminal Code, the laws and the national policy in general.

- What measures for the treatment and resocialization of addicted persons are missing in Bulgaria and how does this affect recidivism among drug addicts?
- Basic measures are missing, typical of highly developed societies. Above all, Bulgarian society and the legislator must realize that in Bulgaria many people suffer from drug addiction. This is a disease of a mental nature, and the clinics for addicts are currently below the sanitary minimum.
If the patient's family does not have the means for the extremely useful, but very expensive private communes, there are almost no other methods of getting rid of addiction. There are no educational programs, mutual aid groups at the probation services, the possibility of adequate medical care, programs for inclusion in work and other activities that would help young people to understand, not through painful methods of abstinence, that life can be very beautiful and a person is actually strong and significant only when he is away from stimulants.
I am categorically against and the ineffectiveness of the punishment of imprisonment for persons who, without having committed another crime, are simply severely addicted to narcotic substances. They need a lot of psychological care, understanding and support from the family, society and, above all, inclusion in all possible programs for joint work, cultural and creative activities.

- Which international practices can be successfully implemented in our country to combat addictions?
- In the USA, at least, the sale of alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana to persons under the age of 21 is prohibited. Because addictions do not start only with drugs – they are always preceded by early use of alcohol and cigarettes, and in our country there is no control at all despite formal prohibitions.
Although the USA cannot be an example of a country that has dealt with the problem of drug addiction, it can at least be cited as an example in legal terms of absolute uncompromisingness towards all merchants who have sold prohibited substances to adolescents.
The addicted persons themselves often immediately face a judge who offers them alternatives – treatment in a medical institution, community service or stay in places similar to those that restrict free movement. I have repeatedly seen court cases in which the addicted person is sentenced to daily reporting to a probation officer to provide a sample for medical examination. Violation of reporting or the establishment of new drug content allows the imposition of more severe probation measures and placement for compulsory treatment.

Canada is a unique example of the fight against addiction.

In this country, the penalties are associated with constant testing for alcohol and drug use and restriction of the right to drive a car and other vehicles if the presence of such is detected.
In this country, which has a huge problem with people using fentanyl, medical stations are built next to drug addicts' gatherings and there, medical personnel, in order to save the addicted person from incorrect dosing with sterile syringes, themselves give him the exact dose of fentanyl, only until they master the state of abstinence and take the patients for treatment in appropriate addiction clinics.
Can you imagine - Canadian doctors build tent medical stations in the middle of the ghettos with people using fentanyl, to give them it in a controlled manner, because fentanyl develops a severe addiction, many times greater than that to heroin, and cannot be treated by alternative methods except through medical intervention to gradually reduce the dose. Fentanyl could hit Bulgaria like an epidemic.
Because one milligram of this deadliest killer, which is also the cheapest drug to produce, can kill a person.
But in our country, the most effective practice would be to create groups for mutual aid and work engagement, as well as considering a new type of punishment, associated with at least a year of continuous testing of the addicted person under the threat of a more severe punishment.
This is the way – treatment of the disease, not punishment for getting sick, because it has already been proven that imprisonment in 90% of cases does not cure, but deepens the addiction.

- Do you think that the Bulgarian education system underestimates the education of children and students about the risks of drugs and psychoactive substances?
- I am absolutely categorical about this and I saw it with my own eyes when I was sent to give a lecture to students while I was a prosecutor in Svishtov. Despite all the examples that I gave to young people of about 17 years of age, I noticed that they had already lost the interest and the need to learn about the dangers of drug use themselves in the first years of their education. These trainings should start in the early grades and must include video materials, no matter how frightening they are, because from my experience as a child I know that this is the way to focus a child's attention on something that poses a great danger and which they must avoid because it is deadly.
- How serious is the threat of fentanyl entering Bulgaria and are the institutions prepared to respond to a possible crisis similar to the one in North America?
- Fentanyl is extremely cheap to produce and has a simple chemical formula that has been known for many years. It is taken by injection, nasal spray or skin patch, and can also be absorbed through the oral mucosa in the form of a lozenge or pill. Its easy and cheap production, its distribution through various vapes and its almost invisible, due to the lack of distinguishing marks, possible presence in any other substance that can enhance its effect in seconds, make it easily accessible to the Bulgarian market.
China is the largest producer of fentanyl and, accordingly, the source of many different products and goods that may contain this substance. Shopping for fentanyl and other narcotics is now practically free on the Internet, and this has increased the death rate from overdose with this drug many times over the world in just a few years.
That is why customs restrictions were introduced in the US regarding the supply of products from China. Serious operational work is also needed by the Ministry of Interior and the customs services in order to protect Bulgaria from this modern killer, comparable in its destructive impact to the most severe mass means of destruction.

- What is the role of parents in the prevention of drug addiction and what signals should they monitor in order to recognize the problem in time?
- The role of parents is, above all, to be an example for their children through their own behavior. In my practice, I have found that in more than 70% of the cases with drug addicts with whom I have worked, and there are thousands of them, there is always a preceding problem in the family - absent parents, children growing up in great prosperity, but without the necessary personal attention and enough love. Those parents who cause each other pain and suffering in front of their child or neglect his anxiety about what is happening at school or among his friends often cause an inner need in the adolescent to be noticed. And in order to save himself from loneliness, he first reaches for forbidden substances.
Therefore, if any recipe or recommendation for parents is possible at all, then mine is that the most important thing for a child is to feel the love and attention to his personality from his parents. Parents should constantly talk to their children and, as friends, show them the path to good and evil. However, there is no ideal recipe.

- After the tragic incident in Blagoevgrad, what specific actions should the state, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, health institutions and schools take to prevent such incidents among adolescents?
- First of all, a new system of public relations must be built immediately and sensibly, in accordance with current needs. It is necessary to rethink the entire criminal law concept on the issue of educating children up to the age of 18 with regard to their actions caused by drug addiction, without seeking blame for its occurrence. It is necessary to decriminalize the possession of narcotic substances for personal use, when it comes to small quantities, while at the same time considering this condition as a disease that must be promptly and mandatorily treated. A legislative criterion, similar to the practice in Germany, should be introduced regarding the insignificance of the case in the case of possession of narcotic substances for personal use, in order to overcome the current case law, in which there are hundreds of different decisions on the issue of when a case is unimportant or insignificant. It is also necessary to create a working group, which, with the participation of the best Bulgarian specialists in criminal law, would discuss the establishment of specialized courts for minors. Their task should not be simply to judge children according to the rules applicable to adults, but to actually assist in their re-education and overcoming already formed illegal habits. These bodies should be composed, as in all developed European countries, of highly specialized lawyers and psychologists with experience in working with juvenile delinquency.
It is high time to repeal the outdated and proven ineffective Law on Combating Antisocial Behavior of Minors and Juveniles, as it does not meet modern social needs and requirements and in practice does not achieve the necessary results.