The Islamic Republic of Iran remains as 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 campaign, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported.
Although Iran has been fighting in the area seriously, the officials of the Islamic Republic have always criticized the lack of collective measures to deal with the issue.
On January 26, 2002, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in a meeting with the then-Secretary General of United Nations, Kofi Annan, referred to the situation in Afghanistan and said that measures should also be taken in the reconstruction period to put an end to the cultivation of poppy and replace it with some useful agricultural crop since the export of narcotics from Afghanistan is posing a serious threat to the neighboring and other regional countries.
On June 26, 2022, Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi made the remarks in a ceremony at the complex of the Anti-Narcotics Headquarters of the Iranian Law Enforcement, saying that there seems to be a serious weakness in forming an international determination in the fight against drugs, and until this weakness is compensated, the situation will not improve.
Iran has made lots of sacrifices in the fight against drug trafficking, adding that Iran has lost 3,800 forces in its campaign while 12,000 other forces have been injured, he pointed out.
President went on to say that Iran spearheads the global fight against drug trafficking while it has been under the oppressive US sanctions, stressing that the United Nations needs to respond to why many counter-narcotics technologies are banned for Iran and Tehran has no access to them.
Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi on the occasion of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on June 26, 2022, said that nomination of such as day shows that this is a global problem and every country should seriously and actively participate in it.
He said that there are countries that have sat in a corner at their safe margins, and their campaign against narcotic drug trafficking is merely words of mouth, but they do not have any serious presence of activity in this campaign.
On June 28, 2020, Iran’s then-Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna, Kazem Gharibabadi, termed the Islamic Republic as a “flagbearer” in the fight against drugs in the world.
“It is for many years that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been discovering and confiscating the largest amount of narcotics in the world under the condition that it has been subjected to the unilateral and illegal US sanctions and has not benefitted from the assistance of the international community,” he underlined.
Iran has a balanced, intelligent approach in the field of narcotics, he said, noting that the country has put preventive measures and plans to raise awareness about the negative impacts of drug abuse high on its agenda in a bid to reduce the demand for narcotics in the society.
On February 20, 2021, Chief of Iran's Anti-Narcotics Police Brigadier-General Majid Karimi in a video conference with the Chief of Spain National Police's Drugs and Organized Crime Unit emphasized expanding mutual cooperation on fighting narcotics at the regional and international level.
We are calling for bolstering cooperation in the intelligence and operational fields to eradicate drug trafficking at the regional and international level, he highlighted.
While explaining the counter-terrorism measures and the involvement of his colleagues across Iran, General Karimi said that in the year 2020, a total of 1,150 tons of drugs were found by the country's counter-terrorism devices, which came from the Spanish side.
Iran holds the record for narcotics confiscation in the world, Eskandar Momeni, the director of anti-narcotics police headquarters said in December 2021.
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.
In the Iranian calendar year ended in March 2021, about 1,200 tons of drugs were discovered, which was the highest rate of discovery in the world,” he explained.
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, and 12,000 were wounded and disabled in the fight against drug trafficking, the Tehran Times newspaper reported.
Compiled and translated by Amin Mohammadzadegan Khoyi
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