TEHRAN – The police have confiscated 285kg of opium in  central province of Semnan, a provincial police chief has announced.

Abdollah Hassani said on Monday the police forces seized the illicit drugs which were destined for Semnan province from Sistan-Baluchestan province, Mehr reported.

During the operation one smuggler was arrested, Hassani added.

Iran, which has a 900-kilometer-long border with Afghanistan, has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins in Europe.

In comments on July 9, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi said 3,815 Iranian law enforcement forces have lost their lives and over 12,000 others have been wounded in the war on drug trafficking over the past 40 years.

Over the past three decades, Iran has seized approximately 11,000 tons of different types of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, he added, saying that in 2018 alone, Iranian forces carried out 1,557 operations against drug traffickers, seizing approximately 807 tons of different types of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances.

According to the “World Drug Report 2019” of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2017 Iran had seized “the largest quantity of opiates … accounting for 39 percent of the global total,” the envoy stated.

MH/PA