By Baghdadhope
According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health drug consumption in Iraq is growing dramatically. Despite the difficulty in drawing precise statistics, cases rose from 3000 in 2004 to 7000 in 2008. According to data provided by health facilities 3 out of ten young between 18 and 30 are drug addicts. The hospital Ibn Rashid in Baghdad, for example, revealed that the consumption of drugs has tripled and is now practiced also by teens only 14 years old. To record the highest number of deaths linked to the consumption of drugs are the central and southern provinces of Maydan, Karbala, Babel, Wasit and the area of the capital where there are now many testimonies of drug pushing and consumption in the sunlight, a phenomenon by all recognized as non-existent during the past regime but that had a strong growth in the months after its fall. In 2003, Iraqi police discovered an attempt to import two tons of hashish and heroin in the southern provinces of Najaf, Karbala, Hilla and Basra, and in 2004 335 kg. of drugs were seized in Amarah, the capital of Maysan Governorate. The phenomenon of drug trade is considered linked to that of the Iraqi borders left unattended, and to the massive influx of pilgrims from Iran who in recent years visited the holy places of Shiite tradition: Najaf, Karbala and Kufa. All cities that are in the most affected governorates.
But drugs circulating in Iraq are not only imported from abroad. The site Jeraan.net, in fact, refers to an article by The Independent that, quoting local sources, shows how, despite some difficulties related to climate, some peasants of the southern provinces, tempted by possible greater earnings, are replacing the cultivation of rice with that of opium poppies. Iraq, again according to the Independent, already was a country from where, with the complicity of the security services of the regime of Saddam Hussein, drugs produced in Afghanistan and coming through Iran reached other markets. The difference now is that this step is now controlled by militias who compete for power in the Shiite south, and that the same Iraq is becoming a consumer country.