Arab states struggle with drugs

Mohamed Hassan hasn't forgotten the good life. He had a big salary from an international firm, Procter and Gamble, and was zipping around the deserts of Saudi Arabia in his new Porsche. He eventually left for his homeland of Egypt where, he says now, there were much better drugs.

But this cocky pleasure-seeker finally hit the skids when his superiors informed him that his dreams of advancement would never come true.

"I made a list and went down that list abusing people by getting them to give me money," he says. "I spent almost $300,000 on drugs before I collapsed financially, physically, socially – and above all, spiritually."

Mr. Hassan was tossed in jail in Egypt and chained to the stairs where every cop who passed him kicked and spat upon him. It was an awakening both to the lack of existing help for drug abusers and to his own depravity, he says now.

"That is where I bottomed out," he says, adding that he spent the next six years in and out of rehabilitation.

Hassan, a devout Muslim, is now sober and determined, he vows, to "deal with the devil" he sees in the soul of every other addict he meets.

Along with his colleagues at Freedom, a group that provides detoxification, rehabilitation, and drug awareness, he is also a part of what amounts to a revolutionary approach to substance abuse in the Middle East.

Nanis William, a drug abuse expert and counselor who worked at a Park Avenue treatment center in New York City until last year, says that Egyptians and fellow Arabs generally still think of drug abuse as "a moral issue, rather than a disease."

Fellow counselors and doctors across the Middle East, where drug abuse has been on the rise for over a decade, say that precious few state resources have been devoted to creating drug awareness and treating young people who fall into the trap of illicit narcotics.

In Egypt, Bango, a cheap marijuana product, is by far the most popular. Heroin is the new drug of choice for wealthy Arabs, but drugs sold in pharmacies are also increasingly popular.

"Here in Egypt, it is the Christians who use alcohol the most, but there is a perception among many Muslims, who are prohibited from using alcohol, that other drugs are OK since the Koran does not specifically forbid them," says Ms. William.

Dr. Ehab El-Kharrat, an Egyptian lecturer at the University of Kent in England, says that recent research shows that in some parts of the country up to 30 percent of young men use soft drugs like marijuana on a weekly basis and that 10 percent use them daily.

Across the Middle East there are new studies to show that young Arab men are indulging in abuse – both soft and hard drugs – at an alarming rate.

In Kuwait, for example, where unemployment is high but oil wealth still sustains youthful indulgences, a recent hospital study determined that nearly 1 percent of the population was addicted to hard drugs. The government has already decided to fund more treatment and rehabilitation efforts.

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