War on drugs is good news for India

Home Minister Amit Shah has declared war on drug traffickers, and that is a welcome move. Drug use among sections of the population persists despite strict laws against their use and sale. This is partly because the Narcotics and Psychotropic Drugs laws make little distinction between different types of narcotics. Much effort is being made to stamp out variants such as marijuana (ganja), a narcotic used in India since 1689. Marijuana is as harmful to humans as alcohol and nicotine, but neither alcohol nor cigarettes have been banned except for minors. There is good logic in this distinction. If minors are given access to alcohol, they are likely to become addicted, just as minors who smoke cigarettes are more likely to become heavy smokers later in life.

Marijuana is inherently bad, just as alcohol and cigarettes are bad. However, the latter can be consumed by minors, except in some parts of India. Marijuana is illegal throughout India, even for adults. Studies have shown that the human brain loses its agility when marijuana is consumed at any age. However, the damage to IQ is far greater in minors than when consumed later in life. Great efforts are made to track down and arrest drug users, including marijuana users, who are by far the largest group in terms of numbers. If marijuana users took up less of the time of anti-drug forces (except in the case of minors), such redirection of efforts could focus much more attention on far more deadly drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

Sellers of marijuana to adults could be treated like cigarette sellers by requiring that each sale to adults be accompanied by a warning about the harmful effects of marijuana on humans. A similar warning must also be issued to users of alcohol and marijuana. A sticker warning about the harmful effects of alcohol and marijuana on the body must be affixed to each quantity sold. A considerable amount of the effort of the disciplined and dedicated forces trying to track down and prosecute sellers and buyers of narcotics is spent on marijuana, while much more effort must be spent on more harmful drugs such as heroin and cocaine, both of which continue to be used in India despite strong efforts by anti-drug forces to stop their sale and consumption. Several people involved in the Indian narcotics trade are linked to the Sino-Pakistani network. If some officials and politicians become addicted to the so-called “hard drugs” in this business, they could be blackmailed into looking the other way when it comes to the more lucrative trade in narcotics such as heroin or cocaine.

Because of this blackmailability, the Sino-Pakistani network uses drug traffickers as the main source of providing black money to the handful of officials and politicians who succumb to the lure of black money and drugs to look the other way when drugs are smuggled across some of India’s land borders or through other means. Many smugglers transfer cash and instructions to terror networks affiliated with the Sino-Pakistani lobby. Drugs are closely linked to the hawala trade, which in turn is heavily infiltrated by agents of the Sino-Pakistani lobby. This lobby is making efforts to curtail the tenure of Modi 3.0, including through terror attacks to damage the reputation of the NDA government. Home Minister Amit Shah has done great service to our country and the success of Modi 3.0 by launching an all-out war against drug trafficking, which is a central pillar of the Sino-Pakistani networks operating in and against India.