Azernews.Az

Between 1-1.3 million people consume narcotics permanently and about 700,000 people consume occasionally in Iran, ISNA news agency quoted Iran's National Police Chief Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam as saying.

Some 28 percent of the narcotics which are produced in Afghanistan is transited via Iran to other parts of the world, compared to 62 percent in the past, he noted.

In December 2012, Mehr news agency quoted director of drug research and training center Hamid Serami as saying that according to the latest statistics, 1.325 million of people in Iran are drug addicts.

Serami said the mentioned number of drug addicts make up for 2,65 percent of people in Iran.

The research was conducted in 31 provinces of Iran, revealing 91 percent of 1.325 million being males, and 9 percent - females.

Serami noted that 53 percent of the people that took the tests were employed, 63 percent of them were married.

Pleasure, fun, curiosity, emotional problems, availability of certain materials were named as main reasons for people becoming drug addicts.

Head of the country's Prisons Organization Gholam-Hossein Esmaili said on Dec. 4 that 43 percent of people in Iran's prisons are either drug dealers, or drug addicts.

Iran has spent more than $700 million on sealing the borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.

According to the UN Drug Report 2011, Iran, which shares a 936-kilometer border with Afghanistan and a 909-kilometer one with Pakistan, has intercepted 89 percent of all the opium seized worldwide.