February 4: The narcotics cell of the crime branch of Mumbai police has hit upon a new idea to fight the Rs 400-crore drugs trade in the city: round up drug addicts and kill the demand for drugs.There are approximately 1.5 lakh drug addicts in Mumbai, and on an average, each one of them consumes one gram daily. Effective use of the simple economic theory of demand and supply, the new formula goes, will lead to a fall in demand and eventually bring drug supply to naught.
The implementation of this `demand deduction policy' has already begun, and 23 addicts have been arrested in the last 15 days and seizures made of contraband worth Rs 3.5 crore. Among those who've been held are five foreign nationals, the narcotics cell's senior inspector V B Chandanshive said. One kilogram of brown sugar costs Rs 2 lakh, and that of cocaine Rs 2 crore. ``It's a clear departure from the earlier policy of preventing drug supplies from entering Mumbai. Now efforts are on to keep a tab on the consumption patterns,''inspector Ashok Dhawale explained. ``Fall in demand is expected to discourage drug traffickers from smuggling their supplies into the city.'' Till two years ago, the narcotics cell was the only nodal agency grappling with drug traffickers who smuggled drugs into Mumbai from across the Indian border. But in recent years other agencies, like the general branch of the police and customs authorities have joined the anti-smuggling operations. Due to the government's stringent measures, traffickers may have recently been able to smuggle drugs from other nations into Mumbai only in small quantities, but the consignments have still managed to find their way into the consumers' hands, officers of the narcotics cell pointed out. The new policy is designed to ensure this doesn't happen. Narcotics cell officers said drug addicts are arrested under Section 8 (C) and 29 of the Narcotic Drug Prevention Act and prevented from taking drugs for at least two or three months. ``In most cases, the addicts are sent torehabilitation centres to get rid of the habit forever,'' an officer said.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
