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Tehran tries to make its addicts go to rehab

Iran's policy of forcibly transferring street addicts to government-run rehabilitation camps appears to falter.
Iranian drug addicts prepare heroin for injection near the Zeytoun (olive) drug rehabilitation center in south Tehran February 23, 2004.The Zeytoun center is run by a former addict called 'Forouhar' who weaned himself off drugs in the [United States]. Senior police officers have recently estimated that the Islamic Republic has some two million addicts and their forces struggle to contend with huge consignments of drugs smuggled over the porous border with [Afghanistan].   
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TEHRAN, Iran — The skyrocketing number of drug addicts on the streets of cities in Iran, and their unstable situation, has turned into a national dilemma. Legal, judicial and security organizations are engaged in dealing with this issue. Indeed, recent remarks by Iran’s police chief, Brig. Gen. Hossein Ashtari, are proof of this. At a press conference Oct. 4, Ashtari announced that the police has prepared a report about the situation of drug addicts in urban centers across the country, and submitted it to the president, speaker of parliament and judiciary chief as well as the Iranian Security Council. “Dealing with this problematic phenomenon is one of our special programs, although its elimination requires the cooperation of all organizations,” Ashtari said.

Based on official statistics announced by Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli in August 2014, there are 1.3 million addicts in Iran. Of these, 100,000 were described as “street drug addicts.” Principlist outlet Khabar Online has published a more alarming take; last October, it quoted the head of treatment and social support at the government’s anti-drug organization as saying that there are 200,000-220,000 high-risk drug addicts on the streets in Iran. Regardless of which figure is correct, the fact remains that it is large — and it seems that the only policy that relevant organizations in Iran have adopted in dealing with addiction is to pick up drug addicts from the streets and their hangouts.

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