TEHRAN – Iran holds the record for narcotics confiscation in the world, Eskandar Momeni, the director of headquarters for the fight against narcotics, said.

Drugs are a source of many social harms, including divorces, crimes, infectious diseases, so that if drugs are controlled, many of the social harms will also be prevented, he said.

“In the last forty years, according to research, there was a decrease in drug use in the 1970s, while narcotic use increased over the rest of the decades.

However, great achievements in the field of countermeasures have been gained, and the United Nations has officially announced that 90 percent of opium, 70 percent of morphine, and 20 percent of world heroin have been discovered by Iran.

Last year, about 1,200 tons of drugs were discovered, which was the highest rate of discovery in the world,” he explained.

According to figures released by the United Nations in 2000, Afghanistan produced about 200 tons of narcotics, but in 2018, it has grown to 9,500 tons.

In other words, the production of narcotics has increased fifty times, which has doubled the need for prevention efforts, he highlighted.

‘Common understanding, global action’

Iranian deputy anti-narcotics police chief Naqi Mahmoudi has stressed that the drug trafficking fight requires a common understanding and action by all members of the international community, and no country alone can address the challenges in this area.

Despite the conditions caused by the coronavirus outbreak and the imposition of harsh sanctions against the country, fortunately, with the efforts of anti-narcotics police in 2020, drug detection increased by 41 percent.

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

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 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.

FB/MG