Narcotics Prevention and Control Plan ready

The government has prepared the Narcotics Prevention and Control National Master Plan to substitute the Narcotics (Control) Act, 2033 BS, which was enacted and implemented nearly 45 years back.

The five-year master plan has been prepared in view of the increasing criminal activities globally due to the growing drug trafficking and abuse and the youth force of the country becoming useless due to drug abuse. It aims to prevent drug abuse and trafficking by creating awareness in society.

The master plan prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs will be enforced from next year itself. The legal instrument has the objective of primarily forging collaboration and partnership among all the stakeholders for reducing infections from drugs abuse, reliable treatment and rehabilitation of the drug users, prevention and control of illegal trafficking of drugs, and crime control.

Home Secretary Tek Narayan Pandey said the master plan has been prepared to hit at the root cause of drug trafficking as the traffickers and criminals are found to be using people without the least knowledge that drug use has on the future.

The master plan includes activities to be carried out for the prevention and control of narcotics and their trafficking from 2022 to 2028.

The number of drug users in Nepal was estimated to be more than fifty thousand as early as Ten years ago. Due to unplanned urbanization, an increase in the effects of the organized crime networks, and the expansion of so-called urbanization, it can be estimated that this number has increased executively on recent days.

This problem appears to be prevailing increasingly in almost all urban areas including Kathmandu Valley, Pokhara, and Dharan and market areas of Nepal, India border. Particularly, the trend of drug abuse and its addictions is increasing among the youth belonging to the vulnerable groups. On the other hand, the drug users who confined themselves to the use of cannabis, cocaine, and heroine, in the past, have now started using drugs by way of syringes since the beginning of the 1990s. As a result of a change taking place in the mode of multi-drug use and addiction, drug users have been increasingly infected with dangerous diseases such as malnutrition, anemia, hepatitis, venereal disease, and HIV/ AIDs.

As per the available data, among the 130 thousand drug users, 8372 are women. The number of drug users is growing by 5.06 per cent annually. Looking at the inmates in prison, 21 per cent of them have been convicted of drug trafficking.

Home Ministry spokesperson Phanindra Mani Pokharel said the master plan has been brought to address this serious issue –the issue of growing drug abuse and trafficking.

The policy of the master plan comprised replacing the Narcotic Drugs Control Act-2033 BS, formulating protocols and criteria for the treatment and rehabilitation center, incorporating educational curriculums about narcotic drugs and establishing narcotic drug control, and developing software to analyze narcotic drugs among others.

The master plan was approved by the Minister for Home Affairs last Tuesday and entered the implementation phase. He said that its long-term importance was to protect productive youths from drug abuse.