Russian censors have banned an article about marijuana, published in 2010 in the Russian version of Esquire. The magazine says it received an official warning from Roskomnadzor, the Russian government's media watchdog, and was forced to remove the content from its website.

Esquire's website now features a message stating that “the editors would like to express their negative attitude towards drug use and also towards the actions of Roskomnadzor.”

The banned article, titled “In Good Shape and High,” describes Americans who use marijuana for medical purposes. The page also featured a picture of a woman with a cat smoking what looks like a censored joint.

Russia's Federal Drug Control Agency has the right to order government censors to block any website propagating illegal drug use. Since 2012, anti-drug officials have succeeded in blocking more than 18,000 websites.

Last month, anti-drug officials blocked Russian Internet users’ access to the popular website The Daily Beast over an article titled “You Can Buy Pot Here: WeedPortal.com and Marijuana’s Lawless Online Frontier.” The article had been published on October 15, 2013, and it was blocked in Russia on April 29, 2015.

To block websites, Roskomnadzor adds an article's web address to an official blacklist, which Russian Internet operators are required to block. Because of technological constraints, adding a single URL to the blacklist means that some Internet providers block entire Web domains.