Economic Sanctions Against Iran, and Drug Use in Tehran, Iran: A 2013 Pilot Study

Abstract

This qualitative study was conducted in 2013 among male drug user patients referred to Drop-In Centers (n = 23) and Residential Treatment Centers (n = 25) in Tehran. The results show that when the price of drugs increases, some drug users tend to use cheaper drugs, which are more harmful, use more harmful routes of administration, such as injecting drugs, sharing needles, and make money illegally. Economic sanctions have threatened Iranian people's economic status since 2006 and have become more intense in 2010 and 2011. As an important consequence of these economic sanctions, the price of drugs, as well as other goods and services, have increased in Iran in recent years. Given these “big economic events,” big changes in the patterns of drug use, and an increase in drug use-related harms, can be expected to occur in the near future.

Keywords :

• sanctions
• drug users
• homeless
• injection
• sharing needle and syringe

THE AUTHORS

Abbas Deilamizade is the chairman of a regional network of NGOs (ADNA) working on drug demand reduction and harm reduction in Central and West Asia. His research interests are drug demand reduction, harm reduction, drug economy and drug control policies.

Sara Esmizade has a master's degree in sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran (Iran). Her research interests are homelessness, drug abuse, harm reduction, and drug control policies.

GLOSSARY

• Drop-in Center (DIC): It is a non-profit center serving homeless drug users, and offers lunch and learning sessions on HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and high risk behaviors. Also, it provides them with clothes, needles, syringes, and condoms. Currently, in Iran most DICs are run by NGOs and co-funded by governmental organizations such as Ministry of Health or State Welfare Organization as well as some international organizations and programs such as the Global Fund.

• Residential treatment center: It provides a multidisciplinary approach to facilitate recovery from substance use. Comprehensive chemical dependency treatment services offered by peer counselors–ex-addicts who are trained in chemical dependency counseling–provide a structured therapeutic environment. The services provided often include individual and group counseling, structured physical activities, stress reduction, holistic approaches such as yoga, vocational training, relapse prevention support, social skills training, educational services, and 12-step substance user programs.

Notes

¹ The journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.

² The Global Fund is an international financing institution that fights AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria with a 21st century approach: partnership, transparency, constant learning, and results-based funding. The Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria was created in 2002 to dramatically increase resources for the fight against the three pandemics. The Global Fund does not manage or implement programs on the ground, relying instead on local experts. It works with partners to ensure that funding serves the men, women, and children affected by these diseases in the most effective way (The Global Fund, 2014).

³ This relatively new term, introduced into the intervention literature by Friedman, Rossi and Flom (2006), refers to major events, such as mega-disasters, natural as well as man-made, famine, conflict, genocide, disparities in health, epidemics, mass migrations, economic recessions, etc., which effect adaptation, functioning, and quality-of-life of individuals as well as systems. Existential threat, instability, and chaos are major dimensions, and loss of control over one's life is experienced.

⁴ Heroin krack refers to a high purity street-level heroin and is an opioid (Alam Mehrjerdi, 2013) Iranian crack or crack (as Iranians call it) is a heroin-based narcotic which is basically different from cocaine-based crack used in western countries (Farhodian et al., 2014).

⁵ A significant number of scientific studies during recent decades have documented the effects of stimulants on human and animal brains and behavior (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999). Amphetamine use causes serious damages to brain cells. It has been posited that effective treatment for amphetamine dependency as well as amphetamine-related psychiatric disorders have to include much more psychiatric and psychological services than treatment programs for opioids (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999). In Iran, the MATRIX model is currently the most used treatment method for methamphetamine (Alam Mehrjardi, 2013).

⁶ The reader is reminded that the concepts of “risk factors,” “vulnerability,” and “protective factors,” are often noted in the literature, without adequately noting their dimensions (linear, nonlinear; rates of development and decay; anchoring or integration; cessation; etc.), their “demands,” the critical necessary conditions (endogenously as well as exogenously; from a micro to a meso to a macro level), which are necessary for either of them to operate (begin, continue, become anchored and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to operate, and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically based, individual and/or systemic stake holder-bound, based upon the “principles of faith,” doctrinaire positions, “personal truths,” historical observation, precedents and traditions that accumulate over time, conventional wisdom, perceptual and judgmental constraints, or “transient public opinion.” This is necessary to consider and to clarify whether these terms are not to remain as yet additional shibboleth in a field of many stereotypes, tradition-driven activities, “principles of faith,” and stakeholder objectives. Editor's note.

⁷ These four neighborhoods are different in some ways. North Tehran is a wealthy neighborhood and its rich people enjoy a very different lifestyle from others. East and West Tehran are middle-class neighborhoods. Although East Tehran is more crowded and the average age of its residents is higher than west, West Tehran is a destination for middle-class immigrants from other cities. South Tehran is a poor, crowded neighborhood that is the first destination for poor immigrants.