DUSHANBE, June 28, 2012, Asia-Plus – International community must combine efforts to reduce drug use and its consequences.

Tajik Drug Control Agency (DCA) chief, Lieutenant-General Rustam Nazarov, remarked this while speaking in the UN General Assembly debate on the impact of drugs and crime on development.

Thematic debate of the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly on
Drugs and Crime as a Threat to Development on the occasion of the UN International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking took place in New York on June 26. 

According to the DCA press center, Tajik drug control chief noted that high level of drug production in Afghanistan was the main factor determining development of the drug situations not only in Tajikistan but in the Central Asian region as a whole.

This timely Thematic Debate organized in cooperation with the Group of Friends in support of UNODC’s efforts in the fight against drugs and crime and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), discussed existing challenges in mainstreaming drug control and crime prevention into development initiatives and ways of improving the international community’s coordinated efforts to address illicit drugs and crime’s adverse impact on development, and the role of the criminal justice sector in promoting  MDGs.

Over the past 12 years alone, Tajik law enforcement and power-welding structures have reportedly seized more than 73 tons of narcotics, including 31 tons of heroin and 24 tons of raw opium.