DRUG ADDICTION GROWING IN KUWAIT

KUWAIT CITY - The corpses started appearing about every other day in
December.

Most were discovered in hospital parking lots, but a few were tossed into
trash bins or abandoned in parked cars. All were men.

This moneyed enclave is struggling to contain a surge in drug addiction that
officials are loath to call an epidemic but acknowledge is spinning out of
control. Kuwait has a per capita income of about $20,000, and drug-smuggling
networks know it is a ready market.

"Before ... when we arrested someone for smuggling 100 or 200 kilos of
hashish, that was something huge," said Brig. Gen. Abdel Hamid al- Awadi,
director-general of the Criminal Investigation Department in the Ministry of
the Interior. "Now that is nothing."

In 2000, for example, new drug controls, including coastal patrols,
confiscated 7,700 pounds of hashish. A year later, it was 10,362 pounds of
hashish. There are also heroin, cocaine, marijuana, opium and prescription
pills.

Statistics released during a recent seminar at Amiri Hospital suggested that
Kuwait had 20,000 addicts, 1 percent of the population. Periodic bad batches
cause the sudden spikes in deaths, which are running at about 75 a year.

In explanation, health and law-enforcement officials point to several
factors. The Iraqi invasion a decade ago left residents traumatized and more
prone to seek solace in drugs, they say. The population of 2 million is
getting younger, and bored, affluent youths who find little entertainment in
the religiously conservative emirate take drugs to pass the time. The
Islamic ban on alcohol augments drugs' allure.

"They have money and nothing to do, so they seek to occupy their time with
drugs," said Tariq al-Jassar, manager of the state-run Amiri Hospital.

"Here in Kuwait there is nothing to do; it's boring all the time," said
Faisal, 25, a recovering addict and son of an army general. "But with drugs
I had fun. I was living for the action - going around, buying, selling."

Dealers readily find couriers among the thousands of laborers entering
Kuwait. The penalty is death, but with thousands of such cases in recent
years, judges have condemned only about five men to death, officials said.

Most treatment is channeled through the government-run Psychiatric Hospital,
which makes many addicts reluctant to seek help. "Some don't think it is a
good idea to be treated at a mental-health center, so they try to avoid it,"
Jassar said. "Once they go there they have the association of being mentally
ill, which only adds to the problem."

Still, the center, with 130 beds, is overburdened. Most patients are sent
there by the courts.

Patients say they are more likely to get off drugs in the hospital than in
jail, where drugs are available. "You can still get drugs inside jail if you
bribe the guards enough," said Ahmed al-Muzayan, 28, a former trainer for
the National Guard. He said everyone around him in the military was using
drugs.

A 200-bed treatment center is being planned, but those who have faced
addiction say much more should be done.

"There are no rehab clinics; we are still really backward," said Muhammad
Abdulla al-Shehab, spokesman for Narcotics Anonymous in Kuwait.

"They still think it is shameful, criminal," he said, referring to the
Kuwaiti government, "and they should make people stop through force."