TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iranian deputy anti-narcotics police chief Naghi Mahmoudi ha 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.
He made the remarks in a video conference on the production and trafficking of methamphetamine in Afghanistan and its market in the world held by the Interpol police on Sunday, IRNA reported.
Stressed the importance of improving the level of regional and international cooperation, he said that conducting joint operations, simultaneously and based on the rapid exchange of information is of great importance.
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.
Battle against narcotics continues despite sanctions, pandemic
Iran has carried on a battle against narcotics in spite of being highly affected by cruel sanctions and COVID-19 pandemic, Eskandar Momeni, the director of headquarters for the fight against narcotics, said on April 13.
Last year (March 2020 – March 2021), amid the pandemic, Iran has participated in more than 20 regional and international events online, in cooperation with the UNODC office in Tehran, he highlighted, IRNA reported on Tuesday.
The counter-narcotics agencies and police forces succeeded in detecting about 1,150 tons of various types of narcotics by strengthening the mechanisms for monitoring and exchanging information between the responsible organizations.
This volume of discoveries is a new and unprecedented record in the fight against drugs, which shows a growth of about 41 percent compared to 2019; some 90 percent of the substances found were opium, 26 percent heroin, and 48 percent morphine.
This success has been achieved with the martyrdom of 10 law enforcement and counter-narcotics forces in the global front against drug transit.
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 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.
