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Provinces

Battling Drug Addiction in Gorgan

March 5, 2015
OstanWire
2 min read
Battling Drug Addiction in Gorgan

Sixty-seven percent of young addicts had their first experience with drugs at school, according to an Iranian official tasked with combating substance abuse in Iran.

On February 18, Alireza Jazini, the deputy secretary General of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters, told a press conference in Gorgan that there were at least 1.33 million drugs addicts in the province in 2014. Only 20 percent of them had any significant chance of undergoing successful, sustainable treatment for their problem.

Jazini told journalists at the office of the governor-general in Golestan province’s capital city that authorities arrested more than 300,000 people in the province in the first 10 months of the year, 66,000 of which were drug-related arrests. In that same period, authorities seized 468 tons of narcotics.

“Compared to last year, there is a 72 per cent increase in the number of non government organizations fighting drug abuse or working to prevent it in Iran,” Jazini said. There were, he said, around 2,100 organizations working to prevent drug use and abuse, and a further 1,800 groups offering drug abuse treatment services. But not all of these centers are operating illegally. “So far, 1,530 unofficial drug abuse treatment centers have been identified,” he said.

Some of unregulated centers employ non-standard methods to treat addiction — and in some cases addicts were treated inhumanely, with poor housing facilities and reports of physical abuse. In the worst cases, he said, addicts have come to the center for help but ended up dead. Authorities have been actively investigating such reports, he said.

The problem of drug addiction was rife among university students, the official said. Among students enrolled under the National Education Assessment Organization in the Golestan region, 2.6 percent were addicted to drugs; 1.6 percent of those studying at universities under the supervision of the Ministry of Hygiene faced addiction problems.

Jazani told journalists that the Iranian public wanted action to combat the drug problem in the province, which is northeast of Tehran. Ninety-two percent of those polled viewed addiction as the greatest social risk to the country. 

 

Read the original article in Persian

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