[Mb-civic] Opiates of the Iranian People - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Opiates of the Iranian People
Despair Drives World's Highest Addiction Rate

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 23, 2005; Page A01

TEHRAN -- If he could afford it, Ali Nariman would drink beer, he says. 
But like most Iranians, he is poor, and so takes his solace in the form 
of a small gray ball of opium.

Swallowed whole for maximum absorption, the ball takes only half an hour 
to deliver the warm, surging relief that inhabitants of the Persian 
plateau have long associated with advanced age. For centuries in Iran, 
opium was regarded as a privilege of the elderly, a largely medicinal 
comfort for the pains and worries accumulated over a lifetime of work.

Nariman is 18. And like hundreds of thousands of Iranians turning to 
harder narcotics at younger ages, he regards drugs as the only 
alternative to work.

"We should have jobs," Nariman said, standing in the vast cemetery on 
the southern edge of Tehran. In a routine played out every Thursday, the 
day families traditionally visit the cemetery devoted mostly to war 
dead, young addicts sweep in afterward to scavenge the cookies and dates 
left on the graves.

"I sometimes find work," Nariman said, "collecting stale bread in town."

According to the U.N. World Drug Report for 2005, Iran has the highest 
proportion of opiate addicts in the world -- 2.8 percent of the 
population over age 15. Only two other countries -- Mauritius and 
Kyrgyzstan -- pass the 2 percent mark. With a population of about 70 
million and some government agencies putting the number of regular users 
close to 4 million, Iran has no real competition as world leader in per 
capita addiction to opiates, including heroin.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092202287.html
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