Punjab’s drug scourge needs policy, not slogans

Why in the News

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has flagged off the first of four “Nasha Mukt Punjab” yatras, a campaign that will cover nearly 4,000 km before culminating at Jalandhar on 30 September. The party has said it will contest all 117 seats in Punjab on its own, and the Union Home Minister is expected to address the closing rally. The campaign follows the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s “Yudh Nasheyan Viruddh” drive, launched in March 2025. That drive has produced arrests and seizure figures in abundance. It has not produced any visible slowdown in the flow of contraband. The tension is that a problem which has outlived a dozen crackdowns and three governments is being contested as an electoral idiom rather than a policy question, so the state keeps publishing enforcement output while the money, the supply routes and the treatment capacity behind the trade stay untouched.

Why has the drug question returned to the centre of Punjab’s politics?

1. A recurring electoral peg: The drug question returns to the centre of the state’s politics before successive elections, and it has returned again as the next Assembly election approaches.
2. The BJP’s framing: The yatras run under the slogan “Bhajpa Da Naara, Nasha Mukauna Saara”, which states the objective of ending drug use without naming a measure that would deliver it.
3. The Congress response: The party’s Punjab in charge led a protest at Chandigarh over the death of a labourer who had publicly questioned the state Finance Minister about the availability of drugs.
4. The Akali Dal position: Leaders of the Akali Dal (Waris Punjab De) made drugs the centrepiece of their campaign at the Rakhar Puniya rally and promised a white paper on the scourge.
5. The common shape of all three: Each response is a yatra, a protest or a promised document, and none of them carries a stated measure on financing, supply routes or treatment capacity.

Why has the border explanation stopped explaining the trade?

1. Position on the supply route: Punjab sits at the edge of the Golden Crescent and shares a border of roughly 550 km with Pakistan, which is the reason most often cited for the scale of the problem.
2. Drone delivery: Drones now ferry consignments across the line, which removes the physical crossing that a fenced and patrolled border is designed to intercept.
3. Relay points in other States: Other States have become relay points in the chain, so a consignment no longer has to reach Punjab directly from the border at all.
4. Diverted pharmaceutical drugs: Pharmaceutical drugs are cheaper, more accessible and harder to trace, and they have become an important part of the trade.
5. The consequence for strategy: A trade that has outgrown the border cannot be contained by a response built around the border.

Why have arrests and seizures not slowed supply?

1. Output without outcome: The campaign launched in March 2025 has generated arrests and seizure figures in abundance with no corresponding fall in the contraband reaching users.
2. Enforcement reaches the wrong end of the chain: Arrests fall on carriers and users at the retail end, while those who finance and supply the trade are not prosecuted.
3. The money trail is unexamined: A serious response has to trace the money moving through the trade, and no campaign so far has produced that examination.
4. Institutional failures are unnamed: The trade survives because of institutional failures that allow it to operate, and no crackdown has identified or acted on them.
5. The cost the seizure count does not record: Families are destroyed and many young Punjabis leave the state in search of a future abroad, which is the outcome no enforcement statistic captures.

What must a policy response do that a campaign cannot?

1. Dismantle the networks: The state has to dismantle the networks controlling the trade rather than only intercept the consignments those networks move.
2. Prosecute financiers and suppliers: Prosecution has to reach those who finance and supply the trade, because that is where the incentive to continue actually sits.
3. Build treatment capacity: Accessible treatment and sustained rehabilitation are required for those caught in addiction, and both are capacity questions rather than campaign questions.
4. Provide an alternative occupation: Young people need opportunities to rebuild their lives, since recovery without an occupation returns a person to the same market.
5. The family cannot substitute for the state: Families matter in prevention and recovery, and that role does not allow the state to abdicate its own responsibility.

Challenges to Punjab’s anti drug policy

1. Prosecution stops at the carrier: Enforcement records the quantity seized rather than the ownership of the consignment, so the chain above the carrier survives every recovery. Eg. The Special Task Force report on Punjab’s drug trade, submitted to the Punjab and Haryana High Court in a sealed cover in 2018, was never made public.
   The Fix: Require every commercial quantity case to carry a financial investigation report naming the funder before the chargesheet is filed.
2. Diverted pharmaceutical supply is a licensing failure: Prescription opioids leave the legal chain at the chemist and the manufacturer, which is a regulatory lapse that no border deployment can reach. Eg. Tramadol was brought under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 by notification in 2018 after it displaced heroin in parts of the state.
   The Fix: Link every Schedule H1 opioid sale to a prescription number in a State drug database and audit the outlier chemists monthly.
3. Treatment is counted in registrations, not in completions: Outpatient opioid assisted treatment centres report enrolment while relapse after discontinuation goes untracked, so the system cannot say what treatment achieved. Eg. Punjab runs Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment centres across its districts alongside government de addiction centres.
   The Fix: Publish a retention at six months figure for each centre, so capacity is measured by completed treatment rather than by registrations.
4. Interdiction lags the delivery method: A small drone crosses in minutes and its payload is recovered only after it has landed, so the seizure confirms the delivery rather than preventing it. Eg. The Border Security Force has recovered drones and dropped consignments along the Punjab frontier in rising numbers each year since 2020.
   The Fix: Fund a counter drone detection grid along the Punjab frontier and tie each recovery to the ground receiver traced from it.

Conclusion

Punjab has heard the promise of a drug free state from three governments and is hearing it again from four parties. The state does not lack a diagnosis of the trade; it lacks a policy that outlasts the campaign that announced it. What remains unresolved is that enforcement produces a number a government can publish within weeks, while financial investigation, prosecution of financiers and treatment capacity produce results only across a full term. The 2027 Assembly election is where that record gets tested, and the test is for Punjab’s political class as a whole rather than for one party in office.

Back2Basics: Golden Crescent

1. What it is: The Golden Crescent is the illicit opium producing region of South West Asia, covering Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
2. Why it reaches India: Afghanistan has historically been the largest single source of the region’s opium, and the output moves outward through Pakistani and Iranian routes.
3. The other producing region: The Golden Triangle, covering Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, is the second major illicit opium region and feeds India’s eastern land routes.
4. India’s position between them: India lies between the two regions, which is the basis for its classification as a transit country as well as a consuming one.

Matching Previous Year Question

“India’s proximity to two of the world’s biggest illicit opium-growing states has enhanced her internal security concerns. Explain the linkages between drug trafficking and other illicit activities such as gunrunning, money laundering and human trafficking. What counter-measures should be taken to prevent the same?”