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Follow the link to learn moreThere are drug couriers among Central Asian migrant workers who come to Russia, said Viktor Ivanov, head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service.
"The current high jobless rates in the former Soviet republics - the Central Asian states - provides infinite human resources for drug dealers," Ivanov told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday.
"There is a huge amount of this human material. We can see it from the migrant workers who have filled the streets of our Russian cities today," he said.
Citizens of Central Asian countries should be banned from entering Russia using their internal national passports, the agency said earlier.
The Central Asian countries that are part of the CIS have a visa-free travel agreement with Russia.
In June the Russian president approved a state migration policy to 2025.
Russia is concerned by the rise in Afghan heroin trafficking smuggled through Central Asia. Russia has become the world's number one consumer of heroin, Ivanov said. Each year drugs kill up to 100,000 people, according to the drug control agency
According to the latest survey by the Federal Drug Control Service, there are 8.5 million regular or occasional drugs users in Russia, Ivanov said in June. About 18.5 million Russians have tried drugs at least once in their lifetime.
