Large Volume of Crack Seized in Iran's Eastern Province
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Law Enforcement Police forces seized 67kg of Crack (condense heroin) in a single operation in the country's eastern province of South Khorassan, a provincial police chief announced.
The drug cargo was seized in a checkpoint operation near the town of Qaen, South Khorassan Police Chief Khalil Vaezi told Tasnim on Saturday.
He added that the operation was part of the recent measures adopted by the Iranian police against drug-traffickers, specially in eastern regions near the country's border with Afghanistan.
In recent decades Iran has been hit by drug trafficking, mainly because of its 936- kilometers of shared borders with Afghanistan, which supplies over 90% of the world's opium, the raw ingredient of heroin.
The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking accounts for up 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, but the figure is expected to rise as international military and development spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.
Iran is on a major transit route for drugs being smuggled from Afghanistan to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the country's war on drug-traffickers has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police forces over the past 34 years.
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.
