Iran executes 6 traffickers charged with cannabis, meth and heroin
Iran executed six convicted drug traffickers whose charges included cannabis alongside methamphetamine and heroin, state media reported on 2 January 2024. Three other traffickers were hanged separately in Ardabil Province for heroin and opium.
Three were hanged at a prison in the northwestern province of Ardabil for buying
and transporting heroin and opium.[1]The other six were executed separately
on trafficking charges naming methamphetamine, heroin and cannabis.[1]The
accounts were attributed to Iran’s official IRNA news agency.[1]
Iran lies on a major opium-smuggling route between Afghanistan and Europe and
has one of the world’s highest rates of domestic opiate use.[1]Iranian
authorities have launched multiple campaigns against drug abuse and trafficking
and regularly announce large seizures of opiates smuggled from neighboring
Afghanistan.[1]Iran says executions are carried out only after exhaustive
legal proceedings and are a necessary deterrent against drug trafficking.[1]
Amnesty International reported that Iranian authorities had executed at least
173 people convicted of drug-related offenses during the first five months of
2023.[1]Amnesty says Iran executes more people per year than any other nation
except China.[1]The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said that Iran had
executed more than 700 people in 2023, the highest figure in eight years.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The article gives no separate execution dates for the nine hangings, saying only recent days, so 2 January 2024 is the publication date used for the incident date.
No names, ages, genders, exact execution sites for the six, or drug weights were published.
The individual roles of cannabis versus methamphetamine and heroin among the six cannot be separated, so all six are counted as cannabis-involved deaths.
The three Ardabil heroin and opium executions reported alongside are excluded from cannabis figures.
Only one opened source was available for this event and no second account could be opened.
Left out, as its quotation was not found in Voice of America: Iran hanged nine convicted drug traffickers in recent days.
Iran's Drug Control Headquarters said more than 500,000 retailers, distributors and people connected to drug offences were arrested in the Iranian year 1404, which ended in March 2026. It said seizures rose about 3% from 1403 but gave no cannabis breakdown.
On 8 November 2025 police in Rey County, on the edge of Tehran, seized 570 kilograms of marijuana and arrested two people after intelligence work and a judicially coordinated raid in western Tehran Province. The commander called it the largest marijuana seizure of the Iranian year in his jurisdiction.
A 45-year-old man known only as B. Kh. was hanged at Shiraz central prison on 1 October 2013 after a Revolutionary Court branch condemned him for buying, possessing and transporting 294 kg of hashish alongside 1.5 kg of crack. The court had also imposed life imprisonment, a 360-million-rial fine and 50 lashes before the execution was carried out.
Manuchehr Najafi was hanged in Tehran's Evin prison on 12 January 2011 for buying and selling 9 kilos of hashish. He was one of eight men executed that morning, seven of them for drug trafficking.