Saudi Arabia launches campaign to combat drug use

RIYADH, June 24 (Reuters) Saudi Arabia has embarked on a campaign to combat the spread of drugs in the conservative Islamic society whose burgeoning youth population must deal with the challenges of unemployment and strict religious rules.

Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz said in an interview with the official Saudi Press Agency today he will take charge of a new body, the National Committee for Combating Drugs, and a fund to help drug addicts and their families.

''Drug addicts are ill and they need treatment, rehabilitation and monitoring,'' the veteran police chief said.

''Society needs to play its role in protecting against drugs ... I call on all experts, preachers, professors, media and parents to help make people aware about the danger of drugs.'' There are no official figures on the number of addicts in Saudi Arabia.

The minister said drugs were not a problem confined to Saudi Arabia, but the national campaign reflects anxiety about the vulnerability of Saudi Arabia's large segment of young people.

A desert country whose main resource is oil, Saudi Arabia has a population of about 24 million including around 7 million foreign workers.

Around 60 per cent of the native population is under 21. Official figures put male unemployment at 9 per cent and joblessness among women at 26 per cent.

Saudi Arabia's austere form of Islam limits contact between unmarried men and women, and the latter are not allowed to drive.

There are no cinemas and single men are even barred from shopping malls.

Ali al-Ameer, a young Saudi film director, portrayed the drugs problem in a recent movie, ''Hilm Dayaa'' (Lost Dream).

''I lived with these guys. They sell their car, their apartments.

Their families suffer and they stay up all night and sleep all day,'' Ameer said, citing an addict friend who died trying to sail a boat while intoxicated.

Saudi Arabia puts drug traffickers, as well as murderers and rapists, to death by public beheading and the authorities regularly report several executions per month of Asian and African nationals for drug smuggling convictions.

''Right now we're studying how to develop the education curriculum to include language on the danger of drugs,'' Prince Nayef said, adding that Gulf Arab countries had stepped up border security in an effort to limit drugs trafficking.

Reuters SBC GC1737