Aizawl: Already in the clutch of heroin illicit pharmaceutical drugs and liquor, Mizoram is facing a new threat of methamphetamine drugs from Myanmar.
The excise and narcotics police have seized more than one lakh tablets of methamphetamine, party drugs also known as crystal meth, smuggled from Myanmar, and have identified 25 to 35 youths using the drugs.
The police seized 1.2 lakh methamphetamine tablets, valued at Rs 2.4 crore were recovered on January 29 in Aizawl.
On March 4, they seized 15,000 tablets of the same drugs, worth Rs 37.5 lakh, were seized.
Two persons, including one Myanmarese national, were arrested in connection with the drugs.
The most common meth tablets seized in Mizoram are red in colour with insignia 88 on one side and ‘l’ or ‘wy’ on the other. Each tablet is sold at Rs 150 to Rs 200, police officials said.
The meth factories across its border in China are partly fueled by pseudoephedrine smuggled out from India into those countries.
“Pseudoephedrine is bought from other parts of India and smuggled out to Burma through our state, which is then used to make methamphetamine and other derivatives which is smuggled across the world,” said an excise official.
Excise police seized 670 tablets of meth in 2001, 971 in 2002 and 287 in 2011. The first seizure of meth was way back in the late nineties, they said.
Rumours have it that the peddlers are here and if the Mizo social networks are to be believed, the evil business often kick starts with a free offer of samples to impressionable youngsters as in heroin addiction. Meth and its family is highly addictive and therefore the high danger.
With 410 kms of international border with Myanmar, how Mizoram is going to defend the youth of the region from this fresh attack of drugs remains the moot question. (UNI)