Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh
The state’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which launched a dedicated complaint number and e-mail address to report the sale of illicit drugs at medical stores, got flooded with calls within the first two days.
Giving a fillip to the statewide efforts to contain the menace of drugs, the FDA had set up a dedicated complaint number and e-mail address last week to report the sale of illicit drugs.
According to sources, the complaint line got around 200 calls related to sale of drugs. The sources said out of them, around 50 calls were related to drugs falling under the NDPS Act, so they were directed to the Special Task Force.
As far as the illegal sale of drugs related to chemists was concerned, the FDA got 50 calls. Out of them, many provided genuine leads and illegally stored habit-forming drugs were seized.
Sources said maximum calls were received from Gurdaspur district and the information also led to seizure of a large cache of medicines from a chemist in Fatehgarh Churian. The chemist was found storing Tramadol in a large quantity. Under the Drug Policy 2017, the state government stringently regulates the sale of six habit-forming drugs, such as Tramadol, Tapentadol, Codeine, Diphenoxylate, Alprazolam, Buprenorphine.
Kahan Singh Pannu, Punjab Chief Food and Drug Administrator, said they were trying to weed out the black sheep in the business.
Significantly, the sale of habit-forming drugs has emerged as a big menace in Punjab. From January to June last year, the state’s FDA had conducted 4,862 inspections and action was taken against 302 defaulters. There are around 16,000 medical stores in the state.
