More than 1,000 people signed up for an anti-drug rally complete with a hearse parade to be held in the city of Novosibirsk on Sunday, local media reported.
Drug-related death rate in Russia
The funerary vehicles will cruise from the Siberian city’s center to the local crematorium, the city’s edition of Argumenty i Fakty weekly said on Saturday.
An art exhibit titled Choose Life and offering some 100 pieces of artwork will be unveiled at the crematorium’s Memory Park, to be followed by a concert, Delovoi Kvartal news website said.
The show will culminate in a torch-lit parade and burning of a huge casket symbolizing Vice, a crematorium spokeswoman told Argumenty i Fakty.
The idea was pitched by local medical and theater students concerned about drug abuse in the Novosibirsk, said Sergei Yakushin, the founder of the city’s crematorium, which also hosts an establishment known as the Museum of Funeral Culture.
“Drug addiction is a serious ‘client supplier’ for the funeral industry…a very dynamic conveyor belt of death. But we in the funeral business aren’t happy about such ‘steady delivery,’” Yakushin said, Delovoi Kvartal reported.