Anti-narcotics Police Chief of Tehran province Colonel Mohammad Bakhshandeh said on Monday that 16.734 tons of narcotics have been confiscated by police force during the first eight months of the current Iranian calendar year (starting March 21, 2019) in the province.
The figure indicates a 20% growth in comparison with the corresponding period of last year, he added.
As police chief informed, in the said period, 50 drug trafficking bands have been dismantled by anti-narcotics police in various operations.
2,579 vehicles were seized along with a number of different weapons were captured, he said.
The police chief noted that 387 smugglers have been arrested and a total of 22,244 culprits have been detained in the province in the mentioned period.
17 smugglers have been arrested in the last week in Tehran, in addition to confiscation of 1,200 kilograms of illicit drugs, said Colonel Bakhshandeh.
The Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug trades originating from Afghanistan in the past four decades, despite its high economic and human costs. The country has spent more than hundreds of millions of dollars on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.
According to reports, 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.
MNA/4792908
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