Jump to full article: Payvand, 2009-08-26
Intro: About six and a half billion cigarettes are smuggled into Iran per year, the managing director of the Iranian Tobacco Company said here on Tuesday.
The smuggled cigarettes are mostly "fake" and under the brand of "Marlboro", Mahmoud Abtahi said.
Being a neighbor of the biggest drug producer in the world, the Islamic Republic has also suffered the greatest financial and human losses in its efforts to fight drug trafficking, Abtahi added. . . .
Great numbers of Iranian border control officers have died while defending their country against well-armed traffickers. They lost their lives to prevent drugs from poisoning the world.
The Tobacco Atlas estimates that tobacco use kills some six million people each year -- more than a third of whom will die from cancer -- and drains U.S. $500 billion annually from global economies.
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