TEHRAN – Over 877 tons of narcotics were confiscated from smugglers countrywide during the first 10 months of the current [Iranian calendar] year (Mach 21, 2020), which shows a 26 percent increase compared to the same period last year, anti-narcotics police chief Majid Karimi has announced.

The anti-narcotics police, despite severe restrictions due to the coronavirus epidemic, have not only maintained contact and interaction with neighboring countries but have become more active consulting with international forums to counter-narcotics trafficking, he stated.

“We are cooperating with the knowledge-based companies in the field of scientific discovery of crimes and the indigenized equipment and facilities of narcotics seizure,” Karimi noted, IRNA reported on Saturday.

Most recently, anti-narcotics police discovered over 1.2 tons of opium in an armed conflict with five traffickers in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan sharing borders with Pakistan.

Iran’s anti-narcotics measures

Iran seized some 1,000 tons of narcotics in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended March 20, 2020), putting the country in first place in the world, Eskandar Momeni, the secretary-general of Iran’s drug control headquarters, said in July 2020.

After the Islamic Revolution (in 1979), 3,800 were martyred, 12,000 were wounded and disabled in the fight against drug trafficking, Momeni announced.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has praised Iran’s efforts to fight against narcotics trafficking on the occasion of International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The organization also officially announced that the world’s first place in the discovery of opium, heroin, and morphine belongs to Iran.

According to UNODC, Iran remains one of the major transit routes for drug trafficking from Afghanistan to European countries and has had a leading role at the global level in the drug-control campaigns.

UNODC World Drug Report 2020 estimates that in 2018, 91 percent of world opium, 48 percent of the world morphine, and 26 percent of the world heroin were seized by Iran.

Iran’s drug control efforts led to the seizure of 266 tons of different types of drugs during the period of April-June 2020, a 20 percent increase compared to the same period in 2019.

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