This article analyses the ways in which the state ‘treats’ addiction
among precarious drug (ab)users in Iran. While most Muslim-majority
as well as some Western states have been reluctant to adopt harm
reduction measures, the Islamic Republic of Iran has done so on a
nationwide scale and through a sophisticated system of ...
This article analyses the ways in which the state ‘treats’ addiction
among precarious drug (ab)users in Iran. While most Muslim-majority
as well as some Western states have been reluctant to adopt harm
reduction measures, the Islamic Republic of Iran has done so on a
nationwide scale and through a sophisticated system of welfare
intervention. Additionally, it has introduced devices of management
of ‘addiction’ (the ‘camps’) that defy statist modes of punishment
and private violence. What legal and ethical framework has this
new situation engendered? And what does this new situation tell us
about the governmentality of the state? Through a combination of
historical analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, the article analyses the
paradigm of government of the Iranian state with regard to disorder
as embodied by the lives of poor drug (ab)users.
