Shortages and rising prices of addiction treatment medicines are disrupting care for many people with substance dependence in Iran, raising concerns that patients could relapse or turn to more dangerous drugs, a former addiction treatment official said on Thursday.
"The shortage of opium tincture has become one of the most serious challenges facing addiction treatment centers," Saeed Safatian, a former treatment director at Iran's Drug Control Headquarters, told ILNA.
Supplies of opium tincture, one of the three main medicines used in Iran's addiction treatment system alongside methadone and buprenorphine, have fallen sharply in recent months.
Safatian linked the shortages to reduced availability of raw opium following the Taliban's ban on poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and said authorities had failed to prepare adequately despite years of warnings about potential supply disruptions.
Proposals to cultivate opium domestically for pharmaceutical purposes and efforts to secure imports from countries including India and Turkey failed to materialize, leaving treatment providers with few options, according to Safatian.
The shortages have fueled concerns among addiction specialists that patients unable to obtain prescribed medicines could return to the illicit drug market.
"Nearly one million patients depend on maintenance treatment with opium tincture across the country, but treatment centers in more than 15 provinces have faced shortages or suspension of their medicine allocations," Ali Ahmadi, deputy head of Tehran province's addiction treatment providers association, said earlier during a protest by treatment providers outside the Health Ministry.
A worker at an addiction treatment center told Iran International in January that he had received no support from the State Welfare Organization despite a decade of operating a treatment facility. The revocation of licenses for some centers had also pushed many patients toward methadone treatment, he said.
The effects of the shortages became apparent in 2023 and intensified in 2025, when some treatment centers were able to provide opium tincture to only a fraction of patients seeking it, Safatian said.
He warned that some users could shift to methamphetamine or combine multiple substances, making treatment more difficult and increasing health, social and economic harms.
Shortages of opium tincture, methadone and other addiction medicines, he said, could continue in the coming months if problems securing raw materials and foreign currency persist, adding to pressure on Iran's addiction treatment system.
