Land of Three Million Heroin Addicts

Anthony Loyd, The Times UK:

Discarded syringes and dirty spoons littered the wasteground in south Tehran’s Darvazeh Ghar (Mouth of the Cave) district as Mohsen and his fellow addicts prepared their heroin fix. “I’ve been using heroin for 14 years,” Mohsen, 36, said, emphasising his words with a wave of the syringe in his hand. “I was diagnosed with Aids and hepatitis C three months ago.”

Behind him, three other Iranian men in their thirties crouched around the cooking spoon, chiding him with slurred words.

“Yeah, you got everything, Mohsen,” one drawled. “What haven’t you got?”

The scene was far from rare in a city in which economic decay, widespread prostitution and a cultural acceptance of opium use have been ignited by the passage of Afghan heroin bound for Europe.

The subject is not a popular issue in the run-up to Iran’s presidential elections on Friday, although the country is far more sophisticated than any of its neighbours in grappling with the problem.

So far, candidates have debated their future relationship with the West over Iran’s nuclear programme and the country’s $11 billion (£6 billion) assets frozen by America since 1979. Yet future co-operation with Europe is central both to Iran’s and Europe’s hopes of stemming the heroin flow.

Roberto Arbitrio, the Italian chief of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Tehran, said: “Iran is the frontline of the war against drugs. And you can call it a war. Police are entrenched here in forts along the Afghan border.

“It’s completely different to the European situation. You have drug groups like guerrilla forces. They shoot heavily with rocket launchers, heavy machineguns and Kalashnikovs.”

Iran, between Afghanistan and Turkey, is the route of choice for heroin traffickers sending their product to Europe, where 90 per cent of the heroin consumed is from Afghanistan. More than 3,500 Iranian police have been killed in clashes with drug smugglers since 1979 along a border that, in places, resembles a demilitarised zone, complete with barbed-wire fences, watchtowers and bunkers.

Official figures suggest that there are between two and three million “problem” opiate users among the country’s 70 million population. About half of the 150,000 prison inmates are inside for drug offences. The UN estimates that 31,000 Iranians are infected with HIV. Most were infected by shared needles. READ MORE

Typical of the contradictions found in what is outwardly a conservative regime, Iran’s counter-measures have been dynamic and progressive. The Government established a national committee to combat Aids/HIV in 1987, chaired by the Ministry of Health, the regime’s most liberalised institution. The committee launched an Aids awareness campaign, non- compulsory testing, blood safety and free treatment for the infected. Some prisons allow conjugal visiting rooms for spouses and prisoners, with condoms and counselling given to all parties. A decade later, the drug control heaquarters was set up to co-ordinate the efforts of internal and external agencies, including the judiciary and the police.

France and Britain have contributed liaison officers and equipment, including sniffer dogs, bullet-proof vests and night-vision goggles. Iran seizes more opiates than any other nation and complains that it is shouldering the burden of a crippling problem born from the European appetite for heroin.

Although Mohsen and his fellow users are unaware of the bigger picture, they have benefited from the regime’s intelligent approach. Mohsen is in a needles and syringes exchange programme. He is given a daily dose of methadone, which inhibits the effect of heroin, and four fresh syringes a day. After three months, providing his heroin intake is down, Mohsen may go on to a methadone maintenance course.

Dr Bijam Nasseri, the programme director, said: “Detox doesn’t work – it has a 95 per cent relapse rate. With methadone maintenance, our clients stop using heroin, get strong again, can be with their family and go to work.”