Bhubaneswar: The growing tentacles of drug abuse across Odisha have turned into a major cause of worry for the security agencies in the state.
Illegal trade of brown sugar is rapidly making its inroads into different parts of the state.
The data released by Odisha Police Saturday exposes the grim reality of drug abuse in the state during the last couple of years. According to the data, the state police seized 35.616 kg of brown sugar in 2020. The amount of seizure of illegal drugs in 2020 is more than 17 times the amount seized in 2019.
The state police had seized 2.647 kg of brown sugar in 2019 while the seized amount stood at 1.45 kg in 2018.
Speaking to Orissa POST, an official of the Special Task Force (STF) on condition of anonymity said that the huge seizure barely impacted the rampant drug trade in the state. The seizure is like a tip of the iceberg.
A DRI officer claimed that due to the rapid urbanisation, Bhubaneswar has become a hotspot for illegal trade in drugs. The slums with their ever increasing population have become hotbed of illegal drug trade in the capital city. The smugglers are also finding it easy to supply the illegal drugs to different parts of Odisha owing to its proximity to north-eastern states and neighbouring Bangladesh. The drug peddlers, mostly based in different areas of Balasore including Jaleswar, are procuring brown sugar from Kolkata and supplying it to Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Khurda and other places in Odisha.
This apart, experts also claimed that the rampant drug addiction among the youths in the slums and rural areas is the prime reason behind the recent spurt in the incidents of crime in the twin cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. Youths addicted to brown sugar are resorting to snatching and other crimes in order to arrange money to buy drugs.
On the other hand, in 2019, a nationwide survey ‘Magnitude of Substance Use in India’ by the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre (NDDTC) and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi had revealed that Odisha was among the top ten states in the country with maximum number of people who need help for opioids related problems. The survey found around 3 lakh people in Odisha were addicted to some form of the opioids.
PNN
