QUIET REVOLUTION AS IRAN WIDENS ARSENAL IN WAR ON DRUGS

TEHERAN - Iran has tried almost everything in its war on drugs:
digging huge trenches along its porous borders with Pakistan and
Afghanistan and even using helicopter guns hips and tanks against
well-armed traffickers.

On the Islamic republic's television screens, Iranians are bombarded
with campaigns highlighting the ills of addiction, dealers are
executed and anyone even caught consuming drugs risks imprisonment,
lashings and heavy fines.

"The anti-drugs war carried out by the Iranian police is unique,"
boasted counter-narcotics tsar Mehdi Abuie as he poured out the latest
figures on seizures, arrests and killings near Iran's long borders
with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The tough policy, however, appears to be failing.

Alongside the statistics that recount regular narcotics seizures, the
figures that two million Iranians use drugs and 200,000 inject are
stubbornly refusing to budge.

Furthermore, a trip to the impoverished ghettoes of south Teheran
reveals the rock-bottom prices asked by dealers in heroin, opium or
hashish.

One dealer, who would only introduce himself as Reza, said he sold a
daily fix of heroin for just 20,000 rials, or a little over two
dollars, while almost the same daily fix for opium costs 70,000 rials,
almost eight dollars.

"I have no problem to pay for it," noted Moslem, a 28-year-old
customer who said the price difference encouraged him to switch from
opium to heroin, a habit he started to keep him awake in his textile
job.

Elsewhere in the Shush neighbourhood of the sprawling capital,
derelict buildings are littered with used and dirty needles and
syringes - evidence of an impending public health catastrophe.

Quiet Revolution

Faced with an HIV/AID and hepatitis B epidemic, Iran has been
undergoing a quiet revolution in its attitude to addiction - in the
shape of a small charity called Persepolis, named after the ancient
capital of the Persian empire.

For just around a year, the family-run NGO has been operating a
backstreet "drop-in centre" for addicts in Shush, providing clean
needles and even methadone to scores of users every day.

"We get around 100 addicts a day. After they register, they receive
breakfast, warm food, shampoo, methadone and a special drug-use
package," says the center's manager Abdolrazaq Ruhi.

Blood tests and even hospitalisation are also on offer in the "harm
reduction" effort - something the centre backs up with counselling as
a first step toward kicking the habit.

"The personal drug-use package is the only way to stop transmission of
hepatitis and HIV," Ruhi explained. "Patients are obliged to return
used syringes to stop sharing them."

Despite the presence of the centre, the official policy in Iran
remains that drug addicts are criminals and should be locked away -
even if the overcrowded prison system is notorious for perpetuating or
encouraging drugs use.

But there are signs that the authorities - who had all but abandoned
the idea of rehabilitation several years ago - are starting to come
around.

"Six years ago, the health ministry and welfare organisations closed
down the rehabilitation camps, and there was no other place for us to
keep the addicts except jails," Abuie explained.

But with drug use rife in prisons, he said addicts were now being seen
"as criminals who need to be healed" - a subtle change to what has up
to now been a no-nonsense police policy of giving users as hellish a
time as possible.

"We will try to reopen those camps," Abuie said.

But even if the government-funded rehab centres do reopen, Persepolis
head Arash Peyberah said the change in attitude still had a long way
to go - given that rounding up users and stuffing them with pills was
more about beautifying Teheran than treating a problem.

And addicts who queue up in Shush see the authorities as far from
trustworthy - especially for women.

"Women don't dare to show themselves in public along with male
addicts," said Mahin, a 54-year-old former hairdresser who is now
homeless, on heroin and a client of the Persopolis centre. "But here
it is so relaxed."