The recent visit by prominent Iranian doctor and directory of drug NGO, Persepolis, Bijan Nassirimanesh, to Switzerland has revealed a few things about the changing face of the Iranian approach to the war on drugs.

Dr Nassirimanesh and Persepolis are helping develop new ways of combatting the issue of drugs and addiction in Iran – a country with two million drug addicts.

His visit to Switzerland, a country well known for its liberal approach to the drug issue has strong symbolic overtones then.

Switzerland is a proponent of combining therapy, prevention, treatment and harm reduction strategies – the so-called “four pillar approach.” This is something that Dr Nassirimanesh feels Iran should turn more towards.

To date, Iran has had a hardline policy towards the drug trade and users with stiff penalties for those caught indulging. With the well documented plight of this major drug highway making constant news, it is little wonder that the government there intially adopted such a strategy.

But with two million addicts, it is also a strategy that is pretty clearly not working.

“Iran is in the process of accepting the four-pillar approach and
looking at the drug user problem as a public health issue as well as a
law enforcement, treatment and prevention matter,” said Nassirimanesh.

Pause for thought might however be considered due to the differences in eth experiences of Iran and Switzerland. Simply exporting the system to Iran may not be the best option due to the dissimilarity of the problems. For example, the low grade quality of heroin in Switzerland is not likely to be repolicated in Iran which is the first stop on the the drug highway from Afghanistan meaning the purity of heroin would be comparibly high.

Nevertheless, the efforts of Persepolis and the drug workers of Iran quite clearly need to be re-strategised. Let’s hope this visit is the first step towards a positive outcome.