Iran, like the West, has a drugs problem

By Fredrik Dahl

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Young Iranians queue for methadone to help end years of drug addiction. Elsewhere in the building, a pale, bearded man lies motionless on a bed, his eyes closed, after starting detoxification.

In the yellow brick building in downtown Tehran, an Iranian non-governmental organization is helping people kick the habit and fighting narcotics abuse that blights hundreds of thousands of Iranians' lives, and wrecks families.

The scale of drug abuse in Iran, which straddles a major smuggling route, is a problem the conservative Islamic state shares with the United States and its other Western foes -- and one that seems to be growing.

"We are very busy here," said nurse Mariam Zahab, preparing small packets of white methadone powder for those waiting for their weekly dose of heroin or opium substitute in the clinic run by the Aftab (sunshine) Society.

"It is a big problem and it is growing, we see it, we experience it," said the middle-aged woman dressed in a loose-fitting hijab, sitting behind a wooden desk in Aftab's spartan premises.

Iran shares a 900-km (560-mile) border with Afghanistan, the world's number one producer of the opium poppy which is the key ingredient for heroin. Opium production there rose by as much as 50 percent last year to supply more than 90 percent of global heroin, according to a United Nations estimate.

One of Aftab's patients said it was now easier to find narcotics in Tehran than alcohol -- also banned in Iran.

"I've used drugs for 18 years -- cannabis, opium and heroin," said Vahid, 35, like others here wary of giving his full name. "It is very cheap."

NUMBERS UP, AGES DOWN

The United Nations' top anti-drugs official in Tehran said an estimated 1.2 to 2 million people from a total population of 70 million in Iran take drugs.

"Iran is experiencing increased pressure from traffickers," said Roberto Arbitrio, representative in Iran of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Thousands of Iranian police have been killed in clashes with heavily armed smugglers since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, but heroin and opium keep flowing across the eastern border.

Experts say availability and affordability -- coupled with a lack of jobs and poor economic prospects for many among Iran's growing young population -- are factors fuelling consumption.

"This is very dangerous; the statistics go up, and the ages go down," said Aftab head Parviz Maleki.

The authorities are signaling determination to crack down, fortifying the remote frontier with Afghanistan and Pakistan by building long embankments of rock and earth and digging deep ditches in an attempt to stop the criminal gangs.