Drugs seized by Bosnian police pile up waiting for new regulations

A dream of a drug-user is a storage in Bosnia where cocaine, heroin, marijuana and others drugs police seize from smugglers and dealers are piling up – and the country awaits a new legal framework for its destruction.

"All the drugs we seize, we hand over to the courts where they are stored. But nothing has been destroyed since February last year," Nermin Lagumdzija, the head of the Bosnian police anti-drug department told The Associated Press.

" We are all disappointed and we don't even know the quantity of drugs sitting around in storage waiting for the new regulation," he said.

Police and the courts are in limbo as the old law is no longer in effect and new regulations have yet to be approved. According to the old law, police were in charge of destroying illegal narcotics, but in the draft of the new legislation this will be done by a special commission which includes representatives from the police, drugs agency, justice ministry and a special state commission to fight drug trafficking.

However, the commission has not been established and there is no timeline to do so, Lagumdzija said.

The problem is that this commission has not been established and "now nobody is in charge of destruction of drugs and that is, to say the least, sad," he added.

"No one knows when will we overcome this problem and the way things stand now it will not be anytime soon."