The US embassy in Azerbaijan has apologized for mistakes in a report on the drugs situation in the country.
'I apologize to the students and society of Azerbaijan for the State Department’s report. The US government works hard and can sometimes be wrong,' the spokesman for the US embassy in Azerbaijan, Terry Davidson, told reporters on Tuesday.
Some 100 Azerbaijani students had been protesting outside the US embassy in Azerbaijan.
The US State Department said in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, published on 1 March, that 30-35% of drug users in Azerbaijan are students.
'The report says there are about 300,000 drug addicts, of whom 30-35% are students. If we take into account the fact that there are about 140,000 students in Azerbaijan, and some reports indicate that 100,000 of them are drug addicts, this is simply absurd,' the chairman of the Student Union of Baku State University, Dashgyn Ganbarov, said.
The students chanted 'No to the deliberately distorted US State Department report', 'We say no to drugs!' and 'Don't slander the students!'
The number of Azerbaijani students who are drug users appeared to be inflated in the report, Davidson said.
'I talked with representatives of the US State Department to ask them to make changes to the report. I do not know when it will be changed, but it will happen,' he said.
Davidson said the United States made similar statements about many countries, because drugs are a big problem today.
'We understand that the drug problem in the United States is much bigger than in Azerbaijan. We recognize that we made a mistake, but the main thing is that we are working with Azerbaijan, where drug abuse remains a serious problem,' Davidson said.
1news.az