KUWAIT TRIES TO REIN IN DRUG ADDICTION

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.

"It is taking on a new dimension," said Tariq al-Jassar, the manager of the
state-run Amiri Hospital.

Kuwait has a per capita income of about $20,000, and drug smuggling
networks know it is a ready market.

"Before the invasion, 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, referring to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
"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 the rate of
about 75 a year.

In explanation, health and law enforcement officials point to several
factors. The Iraqi invasion left residents traumatized and more prone to
seek solace in drugs, they say. The population of two 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," Dr. Jassar said.

Faisal, a recovering addict who spoke on condition that his surname not be
printed, remembers smoking his first hashish at age 14 when he entered
Sabah el-Salem High School in the well-to-do Surra district. It has that
Beverly Hills look favored in many Kuwaiti neighborhoods: huge villas
swathed in marble abutting wide roads landscaped with palm trees.

Soon Faisal was smoking dope all over school - in the parking lot, in the
bathrooms, in empty classrooms. A few years later his dealer had him try
some heroin. He bought a lot for a weekend party, and within a couple of
years he became addicted.

Faisal's father, an army general, gave him $70 to $100 whenever he asked. A
year in the United States for English lessons at El Paso Community College
deepened his addiction through frequent trips to Mexico. When he returned
to Kuwait, he started dealing. Eventually he was arrested.

"Here in Kuwait there is nothing to do, it's boring all the time," said
Faisal, now 25. "But with drugs I had fun. I was living for the action -
going around, buying, selling."

There followed years of ineffective cures - at hospitals and clinics in
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt. Then he tried a program run by a
Muslim sheik called The Good Person, using prayer and other rituals. That
failed, so he joined Narcotics Anonymous, which seems to be working so far,
he said.

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," Dr. 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
doing drugs.

A 200-bed treatment center is being planned, and Parliament has approved
the funds, 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, the 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."