SHILLONG: Social Welfare Minister, Kyrmen Shylla informed that a Meghalaya State Policy on Drug Abuse was being prepared by the department and under process of finalization and approval by the government.
The Policy was prepared on January 25, 2018 and it was returned by the concerned department on February 9 with a suggestion to rectify the draft policy.
Again, the Social Welfare Department submitted the draft policy to concerned departments on May 4 and again the Policy was returned with views on Education, Home (Police), Health and Family welfare departments on August 23 to incorporate certain points.
Raising a supplementary, George Lyngdoh said drug trafficking menace was growing. “In my area too it was not heard of. But for the past two month’s drug abuse in on the rise,” he said.
According to Lyngdoh, there are some problems with the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) and one of the problem is that considerable quantity of drugs has to be found in possession for arrest of an accused
and hence the state government should come up with a resolution urging the Center to amend the Act.
He said as per the law prevalent in other countries if a person possesses 1 gram of contraband drugs he would be punished with 2 years’ imprisonment and $ 10000 fine whereas in India the quantity it should be 1 kilogram and punishment is for just two months’ imprisonment with a fine of only Rs 10,000.
Regarding the question of amending the NPDS Act, the CM said “We will examine the matter.”
Raising a supplementary query, Congress MLA Ampareen Lyngdoh wanted to know whether there was any rehabilitation component in the proposed policy. To this CM replied that there were components of rehabilitation.
Mayralborn Syiem said it was an additional burden on the police to investigate cases under NPDS Act 1995 as police have to carry out other duties also.
Replying to supplementary queries, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said as per basic study done in 2008-09, there were over 17,833 drug users in the state and pointed out that even West Khasi Hills was also facing the challenge of drug abuse.
“We need to get the draft of the policy ready while the police in different districts were working overtime to check the menace of drug abuse,” Sangma said.
“That the menace has assumed a large magnitude in the last few years is a matter of serious concern. Once the policy is in place, we can systematically deal with the matter” he said.