Police seize over 4.8 tons of narcotics in central Iran in 6 months

Iran’s drug combat squads have seized more than 4.8 tons of illicit drugs during six months of operations in the Central province of Qom, a provincial police commander announced. “We have discovered and seized 4.8 tons of narcotics in the first six month of the current (Iranian) year (that started in March, 2013), showing a 200 percent increase as compared to the figures of the last year’s corresponding period,” Qom province’s police commander Brigadier General Kazzem Mojtabaei said in a meeting with Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. He reiterated that drug discoveries have increased in the last six months in comparison with the corresponding period in the last year. Recent surveys show that drug lords have intensified their campaign against Iranian anti-drug squads while their counterparts in Tehran and other major Iranian cities are striving to replace the more conventional narcotics with the synthetic drug chemicals mostly seen in the West, like LSD, Crystal meth and Crack. And now analysts believe that promotion of drug consumption and addiction is one of those new tactics adopted by the US for toppling the Islamic Republic. Each year, the Iranian government spends hundreds of millions of dollars erecting barriers along the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan and pumping resources into checkpoints. Officials said the battle against drug addiction and trafficking costs Iran US$1 billion a year. Iran has always complained about the EU and other international bodies' lack of serious cooperation with Iran in the campaign against drug trafficking from Afghanistan. Iran has recently established a central database and strengthened police-judiciary cooperation in a new effort to combat organized crime. Every year, Iran burns more than 60 tons of seized narcotics as a symbol of its determination to fight drugs.