SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi security forces arrested 11,500 people for drug using and trafficking in 2020, authorities said on Sunday.
Director of Anti-Drug Department Zya Jabr Hussein said the security forces had seized more than 270 kilograms of hashish and 120 kilograms of methamphetamine last year, according to al-Forat news.
More than 1 million drug pills and 15 million of other types of narcotics were also confiscated during 2020, the Hussein added.
“Iraq was only a conduit for narcotics before 2003, but it has now become a consumer of them,” the Iraqi official was quoted as saying.
“Unemployment, a lack of social awareness and bordering some neighboring countries are reasons of using narcotics in the country,” he added.
Until about eight years ago, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Iraq was essentially a transit country, meaning most drugs passed through on their way to somewhere else.
In the Kurdistan Region, authorities seized more than 555 kilograms of narcotics including heroin, methamphetamine and hashish in 2020.
Kurdish officials have warned that drug trafficking threatens to become an epidemic if anti-narcotics forces fail to curtail its rise in the Kurdistan Region.
According to security officials, some of the drugs that they seize are imported illegally from Iran.
