Iran grapples with drug problem

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the Iranian president, has proposed a budget estimated at $368bn for 2011, with a promise that spending will focus on agriculture, education and research.

It is unclear how much of this budget will go on tackling the nation’s rising drug problem, though opium continues to pour into the country from neighbouring Afghanistan.

In the last 10 months, Al Jazeera correspondent Alireza Ronaghi reports, the police force has seized over 400 tonnes of drugs and lost dozens of officers in its attempt to eradicate drug abuse in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Now some public security officials are saying the effort to chase and arrest drug dealers and users is almost pointless in the face of the sheer quantity of narcotics brought into Tehran every day.

At a recent conference on drug control in the city, Brigadier-General Hamidreza Hosseinabadi, head of Iran’s anti-drug task force, criticised international organisations and Western powers for their lack of co-operation.

“Those who chase terrorists in Afghanistan, they have left drug traffickers free,” he said.

“I think they even guide traffickers. They allow a fifty per cent increase of drug production in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, where the headquarters of British forces is located. What does that mean?”

In response, Antonino De Leo, the representative of UN office on Drugs and Crime in Iran, says he is eager to help but his hands are tied.

“Our technical assistance programme … is funded by extra budgetary resources,” he told Al Jazeera.

“So UNODC does not have funding at its disposal to purchase any equipment, carry out any training or even purchase drug sniffing dogs.