Featured publication: Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
For more than a century drug (ab)use has been a health and social challenge for Iranian policymakers. While opium embodied the concerns of pre-1979 social policy, postrevolutionary Iran has faced the surge in heroin and later in the 2000s crystal meth consumption. Rather than adopting repressive security measures, public institutions in the Islamic Republic introduced social policy and public health frames. These include ‘harm reduction’ measures aiming at destigmatization of drug users and of HIV positive people, and maintenance programmes for addicts. After providing an overview of the pre-1979 approach to illicit drugs, the book deconstructs how the republican state undertook a non-religious, non-ideological strategy and how it shaped policies with regard to people’s place vis à vis the question of ‘drugs’, bringing in the case of the addiction rehab centres, methadone maintenance clinics, and outreach programmes for homeless people.
Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Available in Open Access format (thanks to Wellcome Trust funding). You can access it for free