TEHRAN (Tasnim) Police chief of the western Iranian province of Hamedan said 32 rings involved in drug-trafficking and dealing activities have been dismantled in the province during the past 6 months.Speaking to reporters on Thursday, General Haji Mohammad Mahdian said police also arrested 3,539 drug-traffickers in the said period.
Also, 10,417 kilograms of narcotic have been seized since the beginning of the (Iranian) year (started on March 21, 2013), which shows a 79% increase compared with the same period last year, Mahdian underlined.
In recent decades Iran has been hit by drug trafficking, mainly because of its 936- kilometer shared border with Afghanistan, where the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says accounts for 90% of the worlds opium.
The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking makes up 15 percent of Afghanistans gross domestic product, a figure that is likely to rise as international military and development spending decline with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Iran is netting eight times more opium and three times more heroin than all other countries in the world combined.
By Tasnim News Agency
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