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NEW DELHI, June 28 (PTI): India accounts for one of the highest opium users in the world and Punjab has emerged as a major gateway for drugs coming in from Afghanistan through Pakistan, an UN report said Tuesday.
The 'World Drug Report', released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said supply of drugs, especially heroin, has increased in India in the recent years even as licit opium cultivation has shown a decline.
The availability and consumption of drugs have increased in Punjab in the recent years with cities like Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Patiala emerging as hotspots, it said.
The arrival of cocaine, a costly drug, in the country has also increased manifold with anti-narcotics sleuths recovering 200 kgs of the contraband so far this year as compared to 14 kgs seized in the last four years, the report said. The fashion of drug smuggling and supply in India is also changing rapidly, posing a major challenge to authorities and the primary focus now was to understand their fast-changing modus operandi.
The fight against drug smuggling and trade in the country got a major boost when Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) sleuths seized 200 kgs of high-quality cocaine from western metropolitan Mumbai last month.
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