 Iran’s Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) has a mission to provide access to sufficient quantities of safe, effective and high quality medicines that are affordable for the entire population.Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has adopted a full generic-based National Drug Policy (NDP), with local production of essential drugs and vaccines as one of the main goals.Although over 85 percent of the population use an insurance system to reimburse their drug expenses, the government heavily subsidizes pharmaceutical production/importation in order to increase affordability of medicines, which tends also to increase overconsumption, overprescription and misuse of drugs, much like the abuse of pharmaceutical opioids in Iran such as the heavily prescribed codeine for moderate to severe pain.