When an earthquake leveled the city of Bam in 2003, among the emergency supplies rushed to the scene were doses of methadone, a synthetic drug used to treat heroin and morphine addicts, for the 20 percent or more of the population believed to be addicted. So many Iranians rely on opiates that an influential government analyst suggests the state itself should consider cultivating poppies.
"Yes," said Azarakhsh Mokri, director of the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies: "A strategic reserve of narcotics."
But if the utility of narcotics has roots in Iran's ancient culture, and the discount prices (about $5 for a gram of heroin, 50 percent pure) stem from proximity to the poppy fields of neighboring Afghanistan, experts, addicts and government officials agree that addiction has lately emerged as a corrosive new symptom of the country's economic failure, a marker for despair.
"You haven't got a job. You haven't got a family. You haven't got entertainment," said Amir Mohammadi, who at 30 has been an addict for 10 years. "For a few hours, you forget everything."
Heroin, a powerful derivative of opium, is taking hold among young people whose path to addiction typically stems from disappointment in the job market. A government poll shows almost 80 percent of Iranians detect a direct link between unemployment and drug addiction. Iran's government regularly fails to produce the 1 million jobs needed each year to accommodate the new workers entering the labor force from a baby boom still coming of age.
Interesting. I would have thought that a fundamentalist Muslim society would frown on the use of drugs, and apparently the "revolutionary" movement imprisoned addicts after it took over in 1979. But now that's changed.
Having since embraced policies grounded in pragmatism, Tehran has provided surprising freedom in drug treatment, subsidizing needle exchanges and methadone centers. The government also has funded energetic efforts to stanch the flow of opiates on the trafficking routes into the country. In the last decade, thousands of Iranian troops and police officers have been killed battling smugglers, most along the porous borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"Our people in Iran have been in the front line in this war on drugs," Hashemi said.
Yet despite such bloodstained evidence, drugs remain so prevalent that many Iranians describe their availability as evidence of a government plot. After students rioted at Tehran University in 1999, residents of a locked-down dormitory told of drug dealers being allowed in to distribute narcotics for free.
"I believe this is the policy of the state, to make all the youth addicted," said Hamid Motalebi, 22, a police officer on duty in a south Tehran park almost overrun by junkies sleeping on the grass or staggering like zombies. "It's the lack of policy and management. If they could create enough jobs, enough entertainment, why would people turn to drugs?"
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