• Elham Mohebbi, Farin Kamangar, Afarin Rahimi-Movaghar, Ali Akbar Haghdoost, Arash Etemadi, Saber Amirzadeh, Farid Najafi, Fariba Shafeie, Ali Fakhari, Karim Ghaleban, Soodabeh Shahid-Sales, Zeinab Sadat Hosseini, Mohammad Reza Honarvar, Fatemeh Majnooni, Maryam Hadji, and Kazem Zendehdel.
• Cancer Research Center, Cancer Institute of Iran, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
• Arch Iran Med. 2019 Oct 1; 22 (10): 541-545.

BackgroundMeasuring the amount of opium use is a challenge in epidemiologic studies. Self-report of amount of opium use at each consumption, widely used in the literature, usually fails to provide a good estimate. The purpose of this study is to systematically study the perceived weight units of reported opium use in Iran, and compare them to the standardized units of weight measurement.MethodsAn exploratory descriptive study was conducted in six major cities of Iran. Study participants were interviewed and asked to use a Play-Doh-like material to demonstrate the amount of opium they use. To obtain an estimate of the weight of the material used, we multiplied the volume by the density of the opium product. We experimentally determined the density of the commonly used opium products. We used medians and inter-quartile ranges (IQRs) to report the typical amount of each unit.ResultsA total of 108 individuals participated in this study. The most frequently reported unit was "gram"; the median perceived weight for one gram (g) of opium was 0.24 (IQR: 0.16) g. The second most commonly used unit was nokhod with a median of 0.16 (IQR: 0.16) g, followed by mesghaal and hab/habeh, which were 1.28 (IQR: 0.81) and 0.16 (IQR: 0.16) g, respectively. The median perceived weight of mesghaal and gram in the studied cities was less than the expected standardized values.ConclusionIn conclusion, the reported amount of opium use is highly inaccurate and unreliable, and is mainly subject to underestimation.© 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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