DUSHANBE, April 12, Asia-Plus – Officers from the Drug Control Agency (DCA) jointly with other law enforcement agencies of Tajikistan have intercepted 1,314 kilograms of drugs over the first three months of the year, which is 9.8 percent more than in the same period of 2006, when 1,197 kilograms of drugs were seized in the country, the DCA chief, Lieutenant-General Rustam Nazarov, announced at a news conference in Dushanbe on April 12.
The drug control chief also noted that the amount of opiate drugs (heroin and opium) confiscated is on the rise. “Thus, the totaled of drugs confiscated in January-March included 1,022 kilograms of heroin and opium,” said Nazarov, “While over the first quarter of 2006, 803 kilograms of opiate narcotics had been intercepted in Tajikistan.”
The counternarcotics agency director further added that officers from the DCA had detained 32 persons, including four women and three Afghan nationals, involved in drug trafficking over the first three months of the year.
Speaking to journalists, the DCA chief staff head, Colonel Fakhriddin Jonmahmadov, said increase in the amount of the confiscated opiate narcotics had resulted from a bumper crop last year on Afghan opium plantations. According to him, 6,1000 tons of raw opium were produced in Afghanistan last year. The DCA official said that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan for 2006 covered up to 165,000 hectares.
According to Nazarov, one heroin lab has been discovered and destroyed in northern Afghanistan over the report period. “Last year, nine such laboratories were destroyed in northern provinces of Afghanistan bordering on Tajikistan,” the drug control chief said.
He pointed to the necessity of combing efforts of all nations bordering on Afghanistan to fight drug trafficking.
Last year, the counternarcotics agency burned 122.5 kilograms of drugs, including more than 56 kilograms of heroin.
Today, the DCA burned 60 kilograms of drugs, with 40 kilograms of them being heroin.
