Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept. 23 / Trend , T.Jafarov /
Ten people die in Iran each day from drugs, Iranian Parliamentary Committee on Social Affairs Chairman Majid Akhbari was quoted as saying by the Iranian Radio Payam.
According to the Iranian Health Statistics Organization, 3,650 drug addicts died in Iran last year, he said. The Iranian new year begins in March.
The increase in the number of the deaths is linked with that the drug addicts began to use industrially manufactured drugs instead of traditional drugs, Akhbar said.
Based on the official data, Iran recorded about 1, 700, 000 drug addicts. Of these, 33 percent use opium, the Iranian news agency Fars reported.
Some 50 percent of inmates in Iran are serving sentences for drug crimes. According to local media, there are about 150,000 prisoners recorded in the country today.
Iran is located in a transit corridor between Afghanistan, which produces producing raw opium, and its customers in Europe. Iran's government sent thousands of security officers to the east of the country and constructed over 1,000 km of canals, walls and other barriers to block drug penetration into the