TEHRAN – A total of 5,870 kilograms of various drugs were seized at the country’s borders over the past [Iranian calendar] month of Farvardin (March 21-April 20), Border Police Chief Ahmad-Ali Goudarzi, said on Saturday.

In the aforementioned period, 2.5 million liters of smuggled fuel, 278 cryptocurrency miners, 14,062 livestock, and 172,824 items of cosmetics were seized by the border guards, he stated.

Referring to a 15 percent increase in border trespassers over the past month, he said that 21,573 border trespassers were identified and arrested.

The border guards are fighting against the smugglers to the death, and unfortunately, a number of these forces have been martyred in this path, and the result of this sacrifice is a 2.5 percent increase in weapons discoveries over the past month compared to the same period last year, he lamented.

In Iran, 16 provinces share borders with neighboring countries stretching to more than eight thousand kilometers.

Iran has spent more than $700 million on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab, and Central Asian countries.Having a 900-kilometer border with Afghanistan, Iran has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins in Europe.

Despite high economic and human costs, Iran has been actively fighting drug trafficking over the past decades. 

The country has spent more than $700 million on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab, and Central Asian countries.

The Iranian anti-narcotics police discovered 1,900 tons of drugs over the past 2 years, Majid Karimi, the anti-narcotics police chief, has said.

During the past [Iranian calendar] year (March 2021-March 2022), some 2,500 operations were carried out against drug traffickers, he added.

The main threat now is the spread of psychoactive substances, and statistics from the anti-narcotics police reveal that 23 tons of psychedelics were seized in the country last year, Karimi said.

Moreover, some 1,000 tons of narcotics were seized in the Iranian calendar year 1399 (March 2020-March 2021), putting the country in the first place in the world.

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.

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.

FB/MG