Africans posing as tourists smuggle drugs to Iran: Iranian police chief

TEHRAN, Jan.18(MNA) – The police chief announced on Tuesday that some African groups posing as tourists have lately entered Iran to smuggle illicit drugs, particularly hallucinogens and psychoactive drugs. Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam said preventing the production, smuggling, and distribution of conventional illicit drugs was not that complicated, but war on psychoactive drugs has its own limitations. It was easier to control the production and smuggling of conventional illicit drugs as the place and time of their cultivation were easy to identify, but unfortunately amphetamines and other industrial drugs are produced in the shortest possible time and have devastating effects on consumers, Ahmadi-Moqaddam stated. He also censured certain countries for their lack of cooperation in providing Iran with the necessary information on drug smugglers, and emphasized the need to establish an online system between drug producing and drug consuming countries to help the police in its campaign against drugs. Synthetic drugs have recently been smuggled and distributed in Iran by drug smugglers who are seeking to change addicts’ tendency from conventional illicit drugs, such as opium, heroin and hashish, to those drugs widespread in most Western countries, like cocaine, crack, crystal meth and LSD. Elsewhere in his remarks, Ahmadi-Moqaddam commented on a plan by the police to arrest illegal foreign currency dealers and said that the police needs information to implement the plan and is making every effort to identify the routes in which foreign currency is smuggled.