PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Jan 11 (NNN-ANA) – The police have rounded up 30 drug addicts in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province, and shifted them to a rehabilitation centre, provincial police spokesman, Mawlawi Shir Ahmad Burhani, said yesterday.
The official told local reporters that, “the addicted persons are not criminals and all the 30 drug addicts have been taken to a rehabilitation centre, to get treatment and would be reintegrated to their families, after getting discharged from the centre.”
The authorities have also rounded up scores of drug addicts in Kunduz, Bamyan and other parts of the country and shifted them to rehabilitation centres, several months ago.
The supreme leader of the Taliban-run caretaker administration, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, issued a decree in Apr last year, banning poppy cultivation and its processing. Since then, the Afghan police have tightened the fight against illegal drugs, insisting that the struggle would last until the country gets rid of the drug menace.
