TEHRAN – Parviz Afshar, the head of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters, said on Sunday that 30 percent of the narcotics being produced in Afghanistan are smuggled to Europe through Iran.

The drug produced in Afghanistan is also smuggled to Western countries through the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean, ISNA quoted Afshar as saying.

International drug traffickers buy narcotics from Afghanistan and smuggle them through Iran to European countries, he explained.

Elsewhere, he said that it is not possible to abolish death penalty for drug trafficking completely.

Iran is located in the volatile West Asia region and it is not possible to abolish capital punishment for drug offenders, he added.

Afshar said Iran is neighbor to Afghanistan in the east, where it accounts for most of the drug produced in the world, and also threatened by terrorists from the west, the border with Iraq. 

So, it is not possible to completely abolish death penalty for drug trafficking in Iran, he said.

He also said that drug trafficking is harmful to the country's economy.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's annual report in 2015 showed that Afghanistan accounts for about 85% of opium production and 77% of worldwide heroin production.