Twenty-five thousand child squatters, most of them girls, live on the streets of Tehran, where growing drug use and prostitution are leading to a social crisis, a member of the Iranian parliament said Wednesday. The government-run newspaper Iran charged Tuesday that two decades of incomplete attention to the problem were to blame, warning that the social crisis threatened the very fabric of the Iranian family. The state daily warned that many girls, lured with the promise of better lives, leave the country and wind up either in virtual slavery or as the prey of organ traffickers. In July, Mohammad-Ali Zam, head of Tehran's cultural and artistic organization, reported on alarming trends in the Iranian youth.
Drug addiction is the rage among schoolchildren.
Zam added that divorce is on the rise and that the average age of prostitutes has dropped to 20 years old, compared with 27 a few years ago. The Iranian population, estimated at 62 million, is one of the world's youngest, with 35 million people under the age of 20. About 250 tonnes of opium and its derivatives are seized each year by Iranian security forces.