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Iran's war with soaring drug addiction
AMIR Tehrani is 23, hepatitis positive and three months clean of heroin. He is a volunteer at a radical syringe hand-out programme in the heart of working class south Tehran - a new front in Iran's long-fought war against drugs. With more than a million addicts, the authorities fear epidemics of hepatitis and HIV. "I was introduced to heroin by my mother and her friends when I was 15," Tehrani says. "I used to just smoke it but started injecting about three times a day last year. I've been on methadone for three months now but my family don't care. My mother has been in a string of temporary marriages with younger men and when I'm on drugs, it gets me off her back." Tehrani now spends most of his time at the drop-in centre where addicts are given clean syringes, offered medical treatment for abscesses and other injuries, and encouraged to move to a methadone treatment programme. Sitting near the entrance to a small alley, the centre is reached through a nondescript door covered by a cloth curtain. In a courtyard, about two dozen men sit and chat, smoking cigarettes and waiting to see a doctor. They will each be given a pack containing free needles, disinfectant swabs, a spoon for preparing the heroin mixture and a filter to remove impurities in the drug. A woman sits to one side, moving her arms slowly and without co-ordination. Blood is caked on her forehead, and her black manteau - the long outer garment demanded by the religious authorities - is covered in dirt. For Iranian women, the stigma of addiction is greater than for men and many turn to prostitution to pay for their habit. Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-10-26 |
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