Over 1500 Deaths in the First Half of the Year Due to Drug and Stimulant Abuse

The Iranian Legal Medicine Organization announced that in the first half of the year 1396 (2017), 1,527 people lost their lives due to drug and stimulant abuse, which is a 4.8% decrease compared to the same period last year. According to the IRNA news agency, on Saturday, November 6, it was reported that in the first half of this year, 1,337 people died from drug abuse and 190 from stimulant use. Of these individuals, 1,361 were men and 166 were women. Last year, drug abuse led to the deaths of 1,451 men and 153 women in the same period. The provinces with the highest number of deaths were Tehran with 349, Fars with 179, and Isfahan with 101, while the provinces with the lowest numbers were South Khorasan with 8, Mazandaran and Ilam with 9, and Golestan, Semnan, and Bushehr with 12. The decrease in the number of people who died from drug abuse comes after a rise in these figures since 1393 (2014). In the first half of 1394 (2015), 1,470 people died from drug abuse, which was a 0.7% increase compared to the previous year when the number was 1,460. According to the Legal Medicine report, the statistics of deaths due to drug abuse in the country showed a downward trend from 1386 to 1392 (2007 to 2013), but since 1393, there has been an upward trend, with a 1% increase in total addiction fatalities compared to the previous year and a 28.3% increase in fatalities among women. On Friday, November 5, Yasna Behnam, the Secretary of the Central Drug and Poison Information Headquarters at the Ministry of Health, announced that poisoning due to drug and stimulant abuse accounts for 54% of all poisoning-related deaths. She also mentioned that the methods of drug or stimulant use leading to death include 'consuming high amounts of various drugs, consumption with suicidal intent, or accidental consumption, especially in children,' as well as swallowing large amounts of substances by traffickers. Masoud Ghadi Pasha, the Director General of Legal Medicine in Tehran, previously stated that drug abuse is the second leading cause of 'unnatural death' for Tehran citizens. Annually, over 5,000 people die in Iran due to various poisonings, including 153 deaths last year due to drinking counterfeit alcoholic beverages. In recent reports, 10 tons of various drugs were seized in Iran, with 7,725 individuals arrested in one week, and 7 million psychoactive pills discovered in Hormozgan province. Some herbal shops in Iran have shifted towards 'drug production.'