Women in headscarves and men in tatty clothes puff on a glass pipe as smoke swirls around their faces. The pictures published by Iranian media and blogs in recent months are a sign of a new drug epidemic: methamphetamine.

In less than a decade, methamphetamine use has skyrocketed in Iran to the point where about 345,000 Iranians are considered addicts.

Seizures of the drug more than doubled between 2008 and 2012, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Last year alone, the government of Iran confiscated 3.6 metric tons of meth.

A top official from the Iran Drug Control Headquarters said last year that meth could be found in Teheran in "less than five minutes".

Addicts in Iran are mostly urban, middle class and young, experts say. Notably, there are a large number of women who abuse the drug, too.

One of the main reasons why use has spread quickly is a lack of information about the drug, which has led casual users to believe that it is not addictive, experts say.

Struggling university students have begun abusing it to stay up longer to boost their performance in school. Women have been sold the drug in beauty salons with the promise that it will help them lose weight, according to local media reports.

"We really have a hard time convincing people that this is addiction," said Azaraksh Mokri, a psychiatrist who teaches at Teheran University of Medical Sciences and has dealt extensively with the issue of meth addiction.

Opium addiction has long been a problem in Iran, partly because of a tolerance for its use even in conservative rural areas, and also because the country shares a long border with Afghanistan, for decades one of the top opium producers. Opium is still the most abused drug in Iran, according to official statistics.

Inroads

Meth began to make inroads in the country about a decade ago, luring users who preferred its effects as a stimulant to sleep-inducing opium, which was seen as a drug of the poor and elderly.

Experts say the use of meth is partly driven by increased development in the country and more complicated and faster-paced lifestyles.

Drug use and addiction is so prevalent in Iran that it is the second-highest cause of death in the country after traffic accidents, a senior official from the Iran Drug Control Headquarters said in early November.

Iran has some of the harshest drug laws in the region, regularly executing smugglers and drug peddlers. At the same time, the country has had a degree of success in the treatment of addiction, experts say.

"Methamphetamine is something that in a short time, in comparison to other things, has very severe effects on behavior," said Said Kafrashi, an advisory physician and therapist at the Aayandeh addiction rehabilitation clinic in Teheran.

The clinic often tries to bring families of addicts into the rehabilitation process in order to examine all the social factors that may have led to the drug use.

"The family plays a role here," said Kafrashi. "In light of the individual's behavior, the family needs to change their behavior too."

(China Daily 12/09/2014 page10)