Article:
Opiates of the Iranian People
Despair Drives World's Highest Addiction Rate
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 23, 2005; A01
TEHRAN -- If he could afford it, Ali Nariman would drink beer, he says. But like
most Iranians, he is poor, and so takes his solace in the form of a small gray ball
of opium.
Swallowed whole for maximum absorption, the ball takes only half an hour to
deliver the warm, surging relief that inhabitants of the Persian plateau have long
associated with advanced age. For centuries in Iran, opium was regarded as a
privilege of the elderly, a largely medicinal comfort for the pains and worries
accumulated over a lifetime of work.
Nariman is 18. And like hundreds of thousands of Iranians turning to harder
narcotics at younger ages, he regards drugs as the only alternative to work.
"We should have jobs," Nariman said, standing in the vast cemetery on the
southern edge of Tehran. In a routine played out every Thursday, the day
families traditionally visit the cemetery devoted mostly to war dead, young
addicts sweep in afterward to scavenge the cookies and dates left on the graves.
"I sometimes find work," Nariman said, "collecting stale bread in town."
According to the U.N. World Drug Report for 2005, Iran has the highest
proportion of opiate addicts in the world -- 2.8 percent of the population over age
15. Only two other countries -- Mauritius and Kyrgyzstan -- pass the 2 percent
mark. With a population of about 70 million and some government agencies
putting the number of regular users close to 4 million, Iran has no real
competition as world leader in per capita addiction to opiates, including heroin.
When an earthquake leveled the city of Bam in 2003, among the emergency
supplies rushed to the scene were doses of methadone, a synthetic drug used to
treat heroin and morphine addicts, for the 20 percent or more of the population
believed to be addicted. So many Iranians rely on opiates that an influential
government analyst suggests the state itself should consider cultivating poppies.
"Yes," said Azarakhsh Mokri, director of the Iranian National Center for Addiction
Studies: "A strategic reserve of narcotics."
Discount Prices
But if the utility of narcotics has roots in Iran's ancient culture, and the discount
prices (about $5 for a gram of heroin, 50 percent pure) stem from proximity to the
poppy fields of neighboring Afghanistan, experts, addicts and government
officials agree that addiction has lately emerged as a corrosive new symptom of
the country's economic failure, a marker for despair.
"You haven't got a job. You haven't got a family. You haven't got entertainment,"
said Amir Mohammadi, who at 30 has been an addict for 10 years. "For a few
hours, you forget everything."
Heroin, a powerful derivative of opium, is taking hold among young people whose
path to addiction typically stems from disappointment in the job market. A
government poll shows almost 80 percent of Iranians detect a direct link between
unemployment and drug addiction. Iran's government regularly fails to
produce the 1 million jobs needed each year to accommodate the new
workers entering the labor force from a baby boom still coming of age.
"We haven't reached the peak," said Roberto Arbitrio, head of the U.N. Office on
Drugs and Crime in Tehran. "Unfortunately, there's room for increase."
After Iran's theocratic government came to power in 1979, it displayed zero
tolerance for drugs, filling the prisons with addicts. "We paid a high price for it,"
said Ali Hashemi, head of the cabinet-level Drug Control Headquarters.
Having since embraced policies grounded in pragmatism, Tehran has provided
surprising freedom in drug treatment, subsidizing needle exchanges and
methadone centers. The government also has funded energetic efforts to stanch
the flow of opiates on the trafficking routes into the country. In the last decade,
thousands of Iranian troops and police officers have been killed battling
smugglers, most along the porous borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"Our people in Iran have been in the front line in this war on drugs," Hashemi
said.
Yet despite such bloodstained evidence, drugs remain so prevalent that many
Iranians describe their availability as evidence of a government plot. After
students rioted at Tehran University in 1999, residents of a locked-down
dormitory told of drug dealers being allowed in to distribute narcotics for free.
"I believe this is the policy of the state, to make all the youth addicted," said
Hamid Motalebi, 22, a police officer on duty in a south Tehran park almost
overrun by junkies sleeping on the grass or staggering like zombies. "It's the lack
of policy and management. If they could create enough jobs, enough
entertainment, why would people turn to drugs?"
The Aftab Society, a drug rehab center, stands off a busy street toward the
northern edge of a capital city where fortunes tend to follow geography. The
farther north you live, the richer you are. Aftab's clients are wealthy enough to
pay for beds in a detoxification ward upstairs from the offices where outpatients
gather twice a week for group therapy.
"Those who are usually referred to us are educated," said Nassrin Tehrani, an
executive at the Aftab Society. "Put yourself in their place. If you're educated,
you've got high expectations. When the expectations are not fulfilled, the
first reaction is depression. After that, the use of drugs begins."
In one evening session, 18 men and women nodded along as a bearded, middleaged man listed withdrawal symptoms: achy joints, aggression, sleeplessness.
"But I got over all of them," the man said, "because I got a job."
A few miles to the south, on the broad streets of Tehran's aging core, taxi drivers
and other working-class addicts lined up for free methadone at an imposing
government building. The National Center for Addiction Studies deals mostly with
addicts who have taken opium for years while essentially functioning normally.
Mokri, the center's director, compares this type of use, called "instrumental use,"
to the chewing of cocoa leaves in South America or heavy addiction to nicotine.
But the toll on Iranian society is staggering. Mokri estimates that 20 percent of
Iran's adult population is "somehow involved in drug abuse." The estimate
includes half a million dealers, each selling to three or four people, at a
total cost of $3 billion to $5 billion annually. The problem has reached
proportions that could be approached only in terms of management, he said.
"I believe the narcotics dependence system has become so large you should try
to enter it rather than to annihilate it," Mokri said. This year he launched a
program of dispensing tinctures of opium in the medicinal form that physicians
prescribed a century ago, when Iran cultivated its own poppies. He said the
country should consider doing so again, under U.N. supervision, to prevent a
replay of the events of the last five years.
As long as opium was in steady supply, Iran's drug problem was relatively stable.
But when Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement cut poppy production in 2000
and 2001, opium prices soared. Many addicts shifted to heroin, which became
the affordable alternative.
"What you have is a society more or less used to dealing with opium, all of a
sudden flooded with opiates, heroin, hashish," said Arbitrio, the U.N. official.
Running From Reality
Heroin -- and the way it obliterated anxiety instantly when injected -- took hold
with special ferocity among the young, who account for most of the more than
200,000 known addicts.
"Opium, we just don't feel it. It's for old people," said Fariboorz Koocheki,
29, in the junkie park. "For us, it's heroin. And for those younger than us,
it's crack and glass," slang for methamphetamine, the most common of the
synthetic drugs growing more popular in Iran.
"Opium is used mainly as a painkiller or medicine," Koocheki said. "But heroin
helps you to run away from the truth, from the facts. Youth wants something that
helps us run away from the reality of everyday life, and that's heroin."
For many young people in Iran, one reality of everyday life is powerful boredom.
Though rules enforcing Muslim dress have been relaxed in the past three years,
there is little to do, even in a city of about 10 million. The stillness of a Tehran
street on a weekend day is almost sepulchral.
"People here can't have a drink in the pub. The young people can't go to a music
club," said Bijan Nasirimanesh, director of Persepolis, a drop-in center for drug
addicts. "You have the paradox in this country of, coming at you from inside,
everything is totally religious, and from outside, MTV and Western culture."
Located in an alley in Tehran's southern plain, Persepolis serves the capital's
most hard-core addicts in its poorest neighborhood, a gray warren of shops,
garages and rowhouses. Among the dozens of former heroin addicts milling in
the lobby one morning was Davood Safdari, who said he used to be a dealer.
"I never had to go to anyone," he said. "Everyone found me."
Bahman Akbarizadeh, 25, wore a gray shirt and an intense look. "I think if people
had hope and entertainment in their life, they would never go to heroin, because
they know the risks."
A handful of women traded stories of habits that grew out of forced marriages
and addicted spouses. A former weightlifter said a hit of heroin cost him less than
a sandwich. There was talk of a new synthetic drug known as "Tear of God."
"In the social sphere," said Mehdi Golpaygani, the general practitioner who sees
every new Persepolis client and found 68 percent started using drugs before age
20, "we have despair."
In the vast Martyrs Cemetery, which lies at the southern edge of Tehran,
Nariman cursed the 1979 revolution that most of those laid to rest in the
cemetery died defending during the eight-year war with Iraq.
"It was a rubbish thing to do," he said. He pointed to Nader Roosh, a homeless
boy of 15 who sleeps at night in the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
revered cleric who championed a rebellion grounded in social justice. Nariman
said he saw no evidence of such change. "The boys in the north, they can drink
alcohol. They have enough money," he said. "But in the south, we only have
[end of article]
I have chosen a rather lengthy feature article from the Washington Post about the
increasing rate of addiction to opiates in Iran, the country with the highest rate of opiate
addiction in the world. This article is especially compelling because it shows the
disastrous social effects of heavy-handed government policy. In Iran’s case, this
mismanagement is evident in the total ban on much of the entertainment industry as well
as the strict economic controls that hamper growth in the job market.
This is the main phenomenon that affects the supply chain of the drug industry in
in Iran: Iran's government regularly fails to produce the 1 million jobs needed each year
to accommodate the new workers entering the labor force from a baby boom still coming
of age. Because the public sector comprises about 83% of Iran’s economy, the labor
market likely to resemble a monopsony, where the single dominant buyer of labor
dictates the market. In this case, there is an increase in the supply of labor, which is not
“balanced” by an increase in demand, causing an aggregate jump in quantity and the
subsequent shifts in the demand for goods and services in upstream markets.
This situation causes in increase in demand for opiates by dissatisfied, poor
Iranians, who, in the absence of normal “venues” for entertainment, turn to drugs as an
escape from life’s many stresses. "Put yourself in their place. If you're educated, you've
got high expectations. When the expectations are not fulfilled, the first reaction is
depression. After that, the use of drugs begins."
They have to turn to underground venues to “take the edge off,” but, due to the
size of the addict population, there are many consumers, many drug venues, and many
drug dealers, so that the two lowest level markets are rather competitive. The market
involving consumers, however, would be monopolistically competitive, as evidenced by
the product differentiation in the drug market. "Opium, we just don't feel it. It's for old
people," said Fariboorz Koocheki, 29, in the junkie park. "For us, it's heroin. And for
those younger than us, it's crack and glass," slang for methamphetamine, the most
common of the synthetic drugs growing more popular in Iran. Superior goods, such as
beer, are alluded to in the article and consumed by the wealthier minority.
The low price of opiates (“about $5 for a gram of heroin, 50 percent pure”) in the
country is evidence that there exists competition in the market between the opium dealers
and the distributors. Mokri estimates that 20 percent of Iran's adult population is
"somehow involved in drug abuse." The estimate includes half a million dealers, each
selling to three or four people, at a total cost of $3 billion to $5 billion annually.
One would assume that although the border with Afghanistan is rather porous,
considering the operating costs of a land based smuggling operation requiring large
numbers of men and guns to answer to the military threat on either side of the border, the
number of sellers in the international smuggling market must be much smaller than the
number of dealers. Given these “barriers to entry,” one would expect oligopoly. In the
last decade, thousands of Iranian troops and police officers have been killed battling
smugglers, most along the porous borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Likewise, these smugglers are probably few in number compared to the number of farmers in
Afghanistan’s underdeveloped, rural southern region. Farmers do not engage in refining the drug, and they
most likely sell it at a subsistence level. One imagines that prices are largely dictated by the smugglers,
who know that Afghan farmers have few, if any, commercial alternatives. This is most likely an
oligopsonistic relationship.
Finally, because of the tribal nature of Afghan culture and society, there exist very few, if any,
truly independent farmers in Afghanistan, especially in the southern region where poppy fields were
illicitly cultivated even during the Taliban’s reign in Kabul. Typically, there is one warlord family per
region that collects taxes from the locals while arbitrating property claims and disputes (through the jirga,
or “tribal court”) and in exchange provides stability via its private militia. These powerful entities “lease”
land to Afghan farmers who may then use it as they see fit in what is probably an oligopolistic national
market.
Participants
Landowners
Product
(m=many,f=few,1=one) Type of Market SHIFTS OF:
Differentiation SELLERS BUYERS (eg. Monopoly, SUPPLY DEMAND
competition,etc) Left Right Left Right
I=international,N=national, (Y= yes, N=no)
R=regional, L=local
Seller
Arable Land
Oligopoly
Markets
Afghan Farmers
Buyer
Smugglers
Seller
Buyer
Seller
Iranian Dealers
Buyer
Seller
Illegal Bars
Buyer
Seller
Extent: I N R L
Poppy Plants
Extent: I N R L
Opium
Extent: I N R L
Opiates
Extent: I N R L
Seller
Iranian Firms
Buyer
f 1 m f 1 ___________
A B C D
Y Nm
f 1 m f 1 Oligopsony
___________
A B C D
Y Nm
f 1 m f 1 Oligopoly
___________
A B C D
Y Nm
Competition
f 1 m f 1 ___________
A B C D
Narcotics (Heroin, Meth, “Tear of God,” etc.)
Dissatisfied Iranians
Buyer
Y Nm
Extent: I N R L
Y N
Monopolistic
Competition
m f 1 m f 1 ___________
A B C D
Monopsony
f 1 m f 1 ___________
A B C D
Labor
Extent: I N R L
Circle one for each
market
Y Nm
Circle One Circle
One
Circle
One
Write down
one market
Type
Circle One of the
four possibilities
Critique: Monopolistic competition requires that you show product differentiation of some kind or that the
product is not standardized. To show product differentiation you might indicate the existence of
labels, brand name advertising, etc. In monopolistic competition there also must be many firms in the
market with easy entry and no long run profitability. You have reversed monopolistic competition
and competition here.
September 28, 2005 10:57 a.m. EDT
Kodak Tempers
Forecast
For DigitalImaging Profit
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
NEWS ROUNDUP
September 28, 2005 10:57 a.m.
Eastman Kodak Co.,
which is struggling to
transform itself to a digitalimaging company from an old-fashioned film
company, warned that operating earnings from
its digital business will fall short of its
projections.
DOW JONES REPRINTS
This copy is for your
personal, non-commercial use
only. To order presentationready copies for distribution to
your colleagues, clients or
customers, use the Order
Reprints tool at the bottom of
any article or visit:
www.djreprints.com.
• See a sample reprint in PDF
format.
• Order a reprint of this article
now.
The Rochester, N.Y., company said earnings from its digital unit will more
than quadruple in 2005 from $46 million a year earlier, but will likely be
lower than its target of $275 million to $325 million. Kodak cited lower-thananticipated earnings in the medical industry and the possibility of slower
U.S. economic growth.
"We have reduced the number of digital cameras and the numbers of home
printers we're going to build for the fourth quarter,'' Kodak Chief Executive
Antonio Perez said at an investors' meeting in New York.
The company expects revenue from the digital business to exceed the 36%
growth rate projected at the beginning of the fiscal year, marking the first
time in the company's history in which digital revenue will exceed that from
its traditional film businesses for the year.
Additionally, Kodak said that as of Jan. 1 it will establish a consumer digital
business separate from its film systems group, allowing the digital division
to manage its own supply chain needs and retail partners.
The company said the move also allows it to streamline its management
structure. As of Jan. 1, Bernard Masson, 57 years old, president of digital
and film imaging systems, will retire. In 2002, Mr. Masson was hired by
Kodak away from Lexmark International Inc.
His duties will be split between two executives. Philip Faraci, 50, will
become president of the consumer digital imaging group, while Mary Jane
Hellyar, 52, will become president of the film imaging systems group. Both
Mr. Faraci and Ms. Hellyar will report directly to Mr. Perez.
Mr. Perez, who took over as CEO in
June, has pushed to cut back Kodak's
traditional film operations and expand digital products. He has announced
plans to lay off up to 25,000 workers, or a third of Kodak's work force, and
mothball about two-thirds of the company's world-wide manufacturing
"assets."
"By the middle of 2007, we will have largely completed the restructuring of
our traditional business and achieved the cost model necessary for
sustained success in digital markets," said Mr. Perez in a prepared
statement. "The path to this future will be uneven… but we remain confident
that Kodak's profitability and cash generation will improve along the way."
However, the camera and film giant said it expects net cash from operations
and asset sales to be at the low end of its view for the year. Given its
performance so far this year, Kodak said its net cash from operations and
asset sales will likely be at the lower end of its 2005 forecast of $1 billion to
$1.2 billion.
Write to the Online Journal's editors at newseditors@wsj.com5
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB112791271271254483,00.html
Participants and markets mentioned in the article are in red.
X
Participants
Comp. Chp.
Exprts.
Product
(m=many,f=few,1=one) Type of Market SHIFTS OF:
Differentiation SELLERS BUYERS (eg. Monopoly, SUPPLY DEMAND
competition,etc) Left Right Left Right
I=international,N=national, (Y= yes, N=no)
R=regional, L=local
Seller
Markets
Buyer
Comp. Chp.
Mnfctrs.
Seller
Buyer
Seller
Extent: I N R L
Retail
(i.e.WalMart)
Seller
Buyer
Seller
Extent: I N R L
ABCD
Y Nm f 1 m f 1
Competition
___________
A B CX D
Cmp. Chp.
Mkt.
Extent: I N R L
Digital
Wholesale
Mkt.
Extent: I N R L
Bilateral
Oligopoly
Y Nm f 1 m f 1
___________
Y Nm f 1 m f 1
___________
Y Nm f 1 m f 1
X
ABCD
Oligopoly
ABCD
___________
Oligopoly
AX B C D
Y Nm f 1 m f 1
___________
ABCD
Circle One Circle Circle
One One
Write down
one market
Type
Circle One of the
four possibilities
Digital Retail
Mkt.
Consumers
Buyer
___________
Labor
Kodak
Buyer
Y Nm f 1 m f 1
Extent: I N R L
Seller
Buyer
Extent: I N R L
Circle one for each
market