Drugs and the Law
The Narcotics Control Bureau and other State departments recently went on a drug awareness overdrive. The week-long drive focused on the long-term devastating effects of drug abuse. The targeted audience was primarily the youth, with the police lecturing school students and even parents during PTA meetings.
While the efforts of the authorities on the education front are to be appreciated, they have not quite succeeded in convincing the public that they have a focused strategy that will strike at the heart of the problem. There have been many anti-drug campaigns over the recent decades, and young people, no doubt, are pretty much aware of the dangers of getting hooked on drugs. All said and done, the police’s awareness campaign is just the tip of the iceberg in the battle against drugs. The real problem lies in the big sharks who seem to usually get away. As in every business, the kingpins manage to insulate themselves from being discovered or reached as the pyramid grows ever larger as it spreads to the bottom, with minions and traffickers spread far and wide. Why are the anti-drug campaigners not able to zero in on the big time drug traffickers so they can cut off the supply at source?
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There have been umpteen instances of foreigners, outsiders and even locals who have been incarcerated in jail—some for years—merely because they are users. There have been instances in the past when the police have abused the tough anti drug law to indulge in extortion, with quite a few policemen from the Anti Narcotics Cell being suspended. Politicians names have also surfaced, related to a drug cases, though the suspicions have never been substantially established with any investigations. It is ironic really, that rave parties that were banned by the government were actually being promoted by elements with political connections.
In the dark underbelly of Goa’s holiday coast, tourism and the narcotics business have often intertwined. After the arrest of two Israeli drug operators, very little has been done to unearth the links in the international drug chain. Rumours that the Russians have now set up operations in Goa continue to surface periodically, but is the Goa police trained to deal with this level of criminality? The State authorities would have us believe that statistics showing a decrease in drug hauls are an outcome of improved monitoring and heightened vigilance. But we have seen from the involvement and arrest of police officials in the past how confiscated narcotics taken from the saferoom of the court ended up in the hands of one of the biggest Israeli drug dealers operating in Goa. Should we trust such statistics at all?
There is an entire grey market industry now focused on party drugs, and none of these figure on the banned substances list that falls under the NDPS Act. Many of these like Ketamine—an anaesthetic—are being produced in shady industrial estate units across the border from Goa. Ketamine, also known as Big K and Special K in party circuits is today a business worth millions of dollars across continents.
