We meet abandoned addicts on the streets of Tehran: “when they know you’re an addict everyone turns away”. We visit the prisons housing 85,000 smugglers from all over the world. A man from Tanzania tells us he believed he was carrying marijuana but in fact swallowed capsules of heroin. Desperate Afghan refugees trying to escape famine are lured by the drug traffickers. Inside large storage rooms lie tons of confiscated drugs waiting to be incinerated. It’s the result of Iran’s billion dollar crackdown on smugglers. Still it represents only 5% of Afghanistan’s annual production. Despite world-wide implications of smuggling, Iran receives little help from outside. To the West “Iran is still on the borderline between ally and enemy”, says a UN expert on drugs.

Produced by ABC Australia