Azerbaijan grapples with growing drug addiction

2/23/07

A EurasiaNet Photo Story. Photos by Rena Effendi. Text by Rovshan Ismayilov

Drug addiction is growing rapidly in Azerbaijan, experts and physicians say, and although the government has made important strides to fight the trend, lingering trouble areas could hamper a correction of the trend.

In the past decade, the official number of registered drug addicts has more than tripled – from 6,000-7,000 drug addicts in 1996-1997, to almost 20,000 by 2006, according to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Health.

The interior ministry reports that every eighth crime committed in Azerbaijan in 2006 – or some 2,309 registered offenses – was related to drugs. Police seized 531 kilograms of various drugs that year, including 50 kilograms of heroin.

One expert, however, believes that the true number of drug-related crimes – and drug addicts – is actually much higher.

Citing his own statistical analysis, Mazahir Effendiyev, chief of the United Nations Development Program Law Enforcement Unit in Baku, puts the real number of addicts in Azerbaijan at "not less than 300,000." The number would amount to roughly four percent of the country's estimated 2006 population of over 7.96 million.

Similarly, official statistics on drug-related crimes, he said, are only "ten percent of the real drug turnover." Effendiyev, who formerly worked as chief coordinator for the UN's drug prevention program for the South Caucasus, estimates that "at least 500 kilograms" of heroin were sold and used in Azerbaijan last year. "It is a big number which shows how serious the problem is."

The lack of adequate treatment centers for addicts makes the problem even more serious.

Drug addiction was a taboo topic during Soviet times, and remains a relatively new trouble area for policymakers and physicians alike. As elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, physicians say that the light drugs of the Soviet era – marijuana and hashish – are giving way to harder narcotics: heroin, cocaine and LSD.

Psychiatrists rather than specialists in treating drug addictions provide most care. No rehabilitation centers exist. The government spends about $2 for the treatment of one addict per year, according to official statistics, noted Effendiyev, "while this figure in developed countries is at least $100."

Physicians and addicts alike point to cultural attitudes that brand drug addicts as virtual lepers as part of the problem. "People are afraid of going to drug clinics because of discrimination by society," commented Dr. Araz Manuchekhri-Lalei, a senior lecturer on psychiatry at Azerbaijan's State Medical University who runs a private clinic. "These people don't have any social protection."

Meanwhile, the obstacles for access to illicit drugs are steadily decreasing. In Baku, large supplies of low-quality heroin have pushed prices down from the approximate $50-per-dose norm to as low as $3, said Dr. Shaig Sultanov, chief physician at Baku's #2 psychiatric hospital. "It has increased the number of potential addicts," he commented. "Not only rich people can afford [heroin] now."

While drug addiction used to be mostly confined to Azerbaijani teenagers from rich families, the country's middle class – particularly those who work in such sectors as auto repair and apartment remodeling where incomes are steady and relatively high – is now increasingly falling prey, noted Azerbaijani State Medical University's Manuchekhri-Lalei. The government states that, apart from Baku, drug addiction is particularly prevalent along the southern border with Iran and in northern regions bordering Russia.

Target age groups are growing younger, too. Psychiatrist Sultanov says teenagers comprise "the main risk group," though says that physicians also report increasingly having patients who get hooked on heroin or cocaine "when they are already 40 or older."

The causes for the surge, say local physicians and experts, are many.

Pure geography is one. Azerbaijan now features as part of drug smuggling routes running from Afghanistan to Europe via neighbor Iran and from Afghanistan to Russia via the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Some observers point to reported police involvement in the drugs trade as minimizing the obstacles to supply by silencing public criticism. A 2004 op-ed by political analyst Zardush Alizade that accused the interior ministry's anti-narcotics unit of working with drug syndicates resulted in a lawsuit that makes "people afraid to openly speak about it," charged Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, head of the DEVAM human rights center and imam for Baku's Juma mosque community.

The underlying causes prompt greater debate. Hollywood movies broadcast on Azerbaijani TV get some of the blame – psychiatric hospital physician Sultanov claims that 60 percent of his patients say they first got interested in drugs after watching Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" – while Ibrahimoglu argues that a pervasive "spiritual vacuum," along with unemployment and related social ills, has made narcotics more attractive.

Meanwhile, debate surrounds what should be the government response. Azerbaijan's first anti-narcotics government program launched in 1996. The country was the first in the South Caucasus to sign on to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, and set up one of the region's first police units for combating drug trafficking. Government-sponsored public information campaigns also exist.

State Medical University's Dr. Manuchekhri-Lalei sees room for improvement, however. Cooperation among law enforcement agencies, Interpol and neighboring countries is, for now, "formal" and "occasional," he said, while information campaigns are "very unprofessional and primitive."

Effendiyev of the UNDP largely agrees, conceding that "we still lack a conceptual program on fighting the problem." Nonethless, he added, by comparison with its neighbors, "Azerbaijan is the leader in this issue among South Caucasus countries."

Editor's Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance reporter based in Baku.