First meeting of the Narco Coordination Centre mechanism convened

New Delhi , Nov 20 (HS): Government had constituted Narco Coordination Centre (NCORD), the mechanism under Director General (DG), Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), in order to have effective coordination among all the drug law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders, and also to provide a common platform for discussions on drug-trafficking related issues.

The NCORD mechanism has recently been revamped by MHA to create a 4-tier structure to improve coordination in Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) matters.

The First meeting of the Central level Apex Committee was convened to discuss issues related to NDPS policy and operational matters of the drug law enforcement agencies. This high-level committee meeting was convened by Rakesh Asthana, DG, NCB, who is the member-convenor and attended by A. P. Maheshwari, Special Secretary (IS) MHA, JS (IS-II) MHA, senior officers from the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Department of Revenue (Ministry of Finance), Chief Secretaries and high-level officers from States/UTs and Central Government agencies.

The Committee took stock of the existing drug abuse and trafficking scenario in the country and discussed the possible mechanisms to address the same. In particular, the issues related to large scale heroin trafficking from neighboring countries, the diversion, and abuse of pharmaceutical preparations containing narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, the emergence of synthetic drugs and New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), and issues related to poppy cultivation in the country was discussed.

Recently, Government has also constituted an Apex Committee under the Union Home Secretary to support the coordination mechanism under the NCORD, to enable focused resolution of policy and operational issues. Apart from the Apex level Committee under Home Secretary at the Central level, there is an Executive Committee also at the Central level apart from Committees at the State and district level for down the line effective coordination.

The deliberations in the Committee helped to clarify a number of issues as also, enhance knowledge of initiatives being taken by various Ministries of Government of India for drug supply reduction, drug demand reduction, tackling substance abuse including treatment and rehabilitation, and for breaking nexus in drug trafficking. The platform will definitely give a fillip to coordinated action between various Ministries, States, Union Territories, and Agencies to check drug menace in the country.

Further, measures to curb smuggling of Tramadol from India to other countries and that of codeine-based cough syrups to Bangladesh were also deliberated upon. At the same time, the participants acknowledged that the availability of controlled drugs for medical purposes was equally important and presently there is a lack of adequate access to such drugs for pain relief as well as Buprenorphine for opioid substitution treatment because of stringent policies, which needs to be addressed.

During the meeting it was considered out of box solutions to address the NPS problem by way of analog/ generic scheduling of drugs instead of substance-by-substance scheduling. It was also decided to accelerate the progress towards extracting opiate alkaloids through the Concentrate of Poppy Straw (CPS) route to avoid the opium route, which is prone to diversion and abuse. The three licit opium poppy cultivating States of Rajasthan, MP, and UP were asked to ensure the complete plough back of lanced poppy straw after extraction of opium.