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Synthetic Drugs A Growing Problem In Iran

Synthetic Drugs A Growing Problem In Iran

TEHRAN — There are 100,000 drug addicts on the streets of Iran, the country's Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli estimated Wednesday, saying that his agency had a "legal duty" to "pick them up" and send them to obligatory rehabilitation centers.

He said $3 billion was being spent every year on illegal drugs in the country, and that users were being supplied with an increasingly "diverse" selection of synthetic drugs, the reformist daily Aftab-e Yazd reported.

Resolving addiction can't be handled by families alone, he said. With synthetic drugs, he added, "Families do not realize their children are addicted ... because industrial drugs are odorless and have no special signs."

Iran is a neighbor to two of the world's primary drug producing and trafficking areas, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Drug traffickers face the death penalty in Iran.

Another official commented on the social cost of drugs, naming "theft and drugs" as the country's two most prolific categories of offenses. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, deputy head of the judiciary, told the semi-official Mehr news agency that 45% of Iran's prison population was jailed for drug-related offenses.

— Ahmad Shayegan

Photo: Crystal meth — Source: Psychonaught

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Geopolitics

Why The Latin American Far Left Can't Stop Cozying Up To Iran's Regime

Among the Islamic Republic of Iran's very few diplomatic friends are too many from Latin America's left, who are always happy to milk their cash-rich allies for all they are worth.

Image of Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's embassy in Tehran/Facebook
Bahram Farrokhi

-OpEd-

The Latin American Left has an incurable anti-Yankee fever. It is a sickness seen in the baffling support given by the socialist regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela or Bolivia to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which to many exemplifies clerical fascism. And all for a single, crass reason: together they hate the United States.

The Islamic Republic has so many of the traits the Left used to hate and fight in the 20th century: a religious (Islamic) vocation, medieval obscurantism, misogyny... Its kleptocratic economy has turned bog-standard class divisions into chasmic inequalities reminiscent of colonial times.

This support is, of course, cynical and in line with the mandates of realpolitik. The regional master in this regard is communist Cuba, which has peddled its anti-imperialist discourse for 60 years, even as it awaits another chance at détente with its ever wealthy neighbor.

I reflected on this on the back of recent remarks by Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, the 64-year-old Romina Pérez Ramos. She must be the busiest diplomat in Tehran right now, and not a day goes by without her going, appearing or speaking somewhere, with all the publicity she can expect from the regime's media.

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