One Turk dies every day due to drug abuse

ANKARA - Some 365 people died last year in Turkey due to drug addiction and 95.2 percent of the victims were male, Turkish Hurriyet Daily News reported Wednesday.

At least 105 of the deaths were "directly" connected to drug addiction like overdoses, and the other 260 fatalities were "indirectly" caused by drug usage, the newspaper quoted an official report issued by Turkey's Interior Ministry as saying.

The average age of male drug addicts is 33.5 years old, while the average age of their female counterparts is 43.2, resulting in an average of 34, said the report, adding, however, that a child under the age of 15 died due to drugs.

The Turkish security forces detained 105,665 suspects in 2011 in 67,099 drug raids, said the report, adding that the usage of heroin, marijuana and captagon decreased, but the usage of cocaine, ecstasy and methamphetamine rose.

The report also included a survey which revealed that some 40.3 percent of addicts started using drugs because of a "sense of curiosity," 23.89 percent said "their friend influenced them," 15. 23 percent said "they found an exit in drugs while escaping from their problems," while 14.31 percent put the blame on "family matters."

The head of Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime Bureau (KOM) of the Police Department in the Interior Ministry, Mehmet Yesilkaya, said that in 2011 and 2012, 117 tons of cocaine, 17.1 tons of heroin, 1 million pills of captagon and 3 million ecstasy pills were seized by the Turkish security forces.