JAFFA, Israel – The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Akbas quotes an addiction treatment expert stating that a full seven percent of the country’s population, both male and female, are drug users.
Maith Al-Ustad says the Kuwaiti statistic is “scary.” The official added that the phenomenon of drug use is spreading “in an abnormal rate compared with the country’s responses, who are still unable to deal with the span of this phenomenon.”
Ustad explained that in the past the age in which young Kuwaitis began to take drugs was 17. “Today clinics are treating children of the age of 12,” he said.
He said up to 80 percent of the country’s drug traders are non-citizen prison inmates who run the drug business by phone from inside jail. He called the phenomenon “organized crime” and suggested the death penalty a punishment for drug kingpins. He also implored authorities to deport and expel from the country those who are involved in the trading of drugs.