Israel entangled with major drug addiction

Israel’s drug market is worth 1.5 billion dollars and includes approximately 100 tons of marijuana imported annually, Zionist daily Jerusalem Post admitted.

It said the drugs enter Israel primarily through the Egyptian border with about three tons of cocaine entering via Lebanon and Jordan and up to four tons of heroin from Lebanon and Egypt.

Israeli authorities acknowledge that addiction to narcotics in Israel transformed from a “marginal concern” in the 1980s, to ensnaring some 25,000 full-blown addicts, the daily said.

The daily said among all addicts in Israel, approximately 8,300 are presently undergoing treatment at a rehabilitation facility however the success rates are not very high, with only one-third being fully rehabilitated.

While there are no statistics indicating the precise number of heroin addicts in Israel, the daily autoed Elad Borovsky, a clinical social worker who has headed Talpiot’s Jerusalem Methadone Center for six years, as saying that addiction to the powerful drug has become a “major problem” in the capital.

“If a person is already using drugs and experiences heavy trauma or depression, 60-70 percent will eventually use heroin to deal with the problem,” said Borovsky on Monday.

“Methadone is the end of the chain of treatment for substance- abuse issues, especially for heroin addicts who failed to wean from the drug.”

Borovsky said roughly 350 patients visit his clinic daily to receive carefully administered doses of the drug, as well as Suboxone, to meet with social workers for group therapy, as well as physicians overseeing their treatment.

“By age eight or nine, they began smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol, then at between ages 13 to 15 they started to use hash and marijuana, and most of them started heroin by age 18 or 19,” he said.