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Iran: Drug usage soars into the millions |
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Saturday, 23 April 2005 |
Iran Focus
 Tehran, Apr. 23 – There are presently four million drug addicts in Iran, according to a state-run news agency. The news agency also said that there are more than 2.5 million drug users, without offering much detail.
“According to the latest official survey in the country, the number of drug addicts in Iran stands at four million, with more than 2.5 million current users”, it said.
Drug smuggling and sales in Iran was a 10 billion dollar market last year, nearly three quarters of the total revenue from its oil market during the same period, according to the same official survey.
Even so, the latest government statistics are believed by many Iran experts to be far short of the actual numbers of drug addicts.
Previous estimates have put the total number of illegal-drug users in Iran at more than seven million.
On April 7, Akbar Alami, a member of Iran’s Majlis (parliament) from Tabriz (northwest Iran), went public and revealed that the actual number of drug users in Iran stood at 11 million.
Iran’s government is under close scrutiny for the level of narcotics found in Iranian cities. Many experts fear that certain departments and officials within the Iranian regime are overseeing foreign narcotics imports.
In January a similar report was released which showed that one out of every seventeen people in Iran’s 70-million-population was using illegal drugs regularly. |
