flickering pictures

Here’s a story I bookmarked a few months ago and was saving for a rainy day.

On April 17, Pakistan’s Daily Times picked up an Agence France-Presse article about Iran’s experiments with condom and syringe vending machines targeted at drug users.

“Five machines will be installed at Tehran city’s welfare shelters for addicts,” the deputy head of Iran’s anti-narcotics organisation, Mohammad Reza Jahani, said. “Condoms, syringes, bandages and plasters will be easily accessible just by inserting a coin. This will help protect addicts from acquiring AIDS and hepatitis,” he added, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. He said that a single 500 rial (five cents) coin is required to purchase the items. “The machines will be used for a three month trial period and if the scheme is successful then we will upgrade them and increase their distribution to other shelters,” he said. Iranian officials normally estimate the number of regular drug users at two million, in a country with a population of more than 71 million.

I don’t have a lot of great things to say about Iran’s current government, but it’s really interesting to note that even an über-conservative, fanatical, theocratic police state with a penchant for violent outbursts and revisionist history sees the benefits of condom use and safe injection sites, while we progressive-minded North Americans continue to lag behind.

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