INTRODUCTION
Opioid substances use and abuse is globally perceived as one of the alarming public health problems. No effective treatment and prevention related policy issues can be arrived at without adequate information regarding the nature and distribution of drug abuse in population and their causative factors (1). Widespread data in drug abuse is lacking and it is difficult to make generalizations because of regional variations. The geographical location of Afghanistan makes transit of opium drugs possible across the east Azerbaijan province in Iran. The main of this study refer to diagnosis and detoxification of opioid abusers. Testing for presence or absence of drugs of abuse in urine also helps to screening improvement of patients in treatment (2). Because opioids and their metabolites detections are feasible in urine samples, therefore in this study we have just done to opioid confirmation by TLC method analysis in urine of abusers. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) has been used as a broad spectrum screen for detection of drug abuse (3). As a part of this recent, large-scale, well-designed drug abuse epidemiological study supported by the clinical laboratory of welfare organization has been extremely helpful in quick diagnosis and rapid detoxification of suspected substance opioid abusers who had denied history of any drug use or abuse at first contact with the treatment team. Several screening studies including screening and confirmation of opioids by thin-layer chromatography (2), an evaluation of TLC system for opioid analysis (3) and also use of thin layer chromatographic analysis in forensic medical analysis of urine for opioids have been reported (4). With this background we carried out screening of morphine and codeine of opioid abusers at toxicology laboratory of welfare organization in Tabriz/ Iran.