Drug Addiction and Prositution on the Rise in Iran - Greater than in the West!

[GHook93]

Note: This is not some pro-western article or right-wing article. This is the Asian Times, they are hardly pro-western or right-winged! Basically its showing the Alamdouchebag has basically set Iran back a few 100 years. There drug addiction and prostitution problems dwarfs America's yet we have a much more tolerant system for both prostitution and drug addiction not to mention 4x the population. This is eye-opening!

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

How, then, should we explain an eruption of social pathologies in Iran such as drug addiction and prostitution, on a scale much worse than anything observed in the West? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it appears that Islamic theocracy promotes rather than represses social decay.

Iran is dying. The collapse of Iran's birth rate during the past 20 years is the fastest recorded in any country, ever.

It seems that a spiritual decay has overcome Iran, despite best efforts of a totalitarian theocracy. Popular morale has deteriorated much faster than in the "decadent" West against which the Khomeini revolution was directed.

Their efforts to isolate Iran from the cultural degradation of the American "great Satan" have produced social pathologies worse than those in any Western country. With oil at barely one-fifth of its 2008 peak price, they will run out of money some time in late 2009 or early 2010. Game theory would predict that Iran's leaders will gamble on a strategic long shot. That is not a comforting thought for Iran's neighbors.

Two indicators of Iranian morale are worth citing.

(1) First, prostitution has become a career of choice among educated Iranian women. On February 3, the Austrian daily Der Standard published the results of two investigations conducted by the Tehran police, suppressed by the Iranian media. [1]

"More than 90% of Tehran's prostitutes have passed the university entrance exam, according to the results of one study, and more than 30% of them are registered at a university or studying," reports Der Standard. "The study was assigned to the Tehran Police Department and the Ministry of Health, and when the results were tabulated in early January no local newspaper dared to so much as mention them."

The Austrian newspaper added, "Eighty percent of the Tehran sex workers maintained that they pursue this career voluntarily and temporarily. The educated ones are waiting for better jobs. Those with university qualifications intend to study later, and the ones who already are registered at university mention the high tuition [fees] as their motive for prostitution ... they are content with their occupation and do not consider it a sin according to Islamic law."

There is an extensive trade in poor Iranian women who are trafficked to the Gulf states in huge numbers, as well as to Europe and Japan. "A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women," I wrote in a 2006 study of Iranian prostitution, Jihads and whores.

Prostitution as a response to poverty and abuse is one thing, but the results of this new study reflect something quite different. The educated women of Tehran choose prostitution in pursuit of upward mobility, as a way of sharing in the oil-based potlatch that made Tehran the world's hottest real estate market during 2006 and 2007.

A country is beaten when it sells its women, but it is damned when its women sell themselves. The popular image of the Iranian sex trade portrays tearful teenagers abused and cast out by impoverished parents. Such victims doubtless abound, but the majority of Tehran's

(2) Second, according to a recent report from the US Council on Foreign Relations, "Iran serves as the major transport hub for opiates produced by [Afghanistan], and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that Iran has as many as 1.7 million opiate addicts." That is, 5% of Iran's adult, non-elderly population of 35 million is addicted to opiates. That is an astonishing number, unseen since the peak of Chinese addiction during the 19th century. The closest American equivalent (from the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health) found that 119,000 Americans reported using heroin within the prior month, or less than one-tenth of 1% of the non-elderly adult population.

For the majority of young Iranians, there is no way up, only a way out; 36% of Iran's youth aged 15 to 29 years want to emigrate, according to yet another unpublicized Iranian study, this time by the country's Education Ministry, Der Standard adds. Only 32% find the existing social norms acceptable, while 63% complain about unemployment, the social order or lack of money

 

[ABikerSailor]

Cool.......maybe this means that eventually islam will be nothing more than a memory of a bad dream.

 

[GHook93]

Cool.......maybe this means that eventually islam will be nothing more than a memory of a bad dream.

Not sure that will happen, but I find it interesting that in such a repressive regime the world's oldest profession is dwarfing Americans and drug use is also dwarfing Americas, but then again with the largest herion producer in the world (Afghanistan) next door, its not that surprising!

 

[ABikerSailor]

About 2-3 years ago, in Iraq, the largest selling products in their markets (they call 'em souks), was cold medication like Robitussin, as well as Viagra.

They were tripping on cough medicine and having sex.

Interesting eh? Especially for a good muslim country.

 

[LiveUninhibited]

Oh so harsh laws don't work? Can we decriminalize drugs now so we can keep rapists behind bars longer?

A country is beaten when it sells its women, but it is damned when its women sell themselves. The popular image of the Iranian sex trade portrays tearful teenagers abused and cast out by impoverished parents.

Women being sold into sex against their will is what's disgusting. I don't know if teenagers being sold into sex slavery is the same as, "women selling themselves." They're being sold by somebody else who claims to own them. The article also mentioned women using it as a way to gain upward mobility. If that's what they freely chose then good for them. Be better if it was regulated to monitor STDs and such, though.

 

[GHook93]

Oh so harsh laws don't work? Can we decriminalize drugs now so we can keep rapists behind bars longer?

A country is beaten when it sells its women, but it is damned when its women sell themselves. The popular image of the Iranian sex trade portrays tearful teenagers abused and cast out by impoverished parents.

Women being sold into sex against their will is what's disgusting. I don't know if teenagers being sold into sex slavery is the same as, "women selling themselves." They're being sold by somebody else who claims to own them. The article also mentioned women using it as a way to gain upward mobility. If that's what they freely chose then good for them. Be better if it was regulated to monitor STDs and such, though.

I 100% agree repeal the Harrison Act and legalize prostitution!