Expressing deep anguish over the deaths of youths in Punjab due to drug overdose, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday questioned the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh’s stoic silence over the avoidable loss of innocent lives.
AAP’s Punjab unit chief and Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann stressed on the need for launching a relentless anti-drug campaign which should be “free from political intervention, to track the drug lords or smugglers and to end the menace once and for all”.
“AAP and the people of the State would offer their unstinted support to the innovative campaign to save lives,” he said.
He said that the people, especially the youth, had suffered on many counts during the 10-year-long ‘misrule’ of the previous Badal Government when the drug menace had touched its zenith and taken a toll on the lives of thousands of youths in the state.
He lamented that Capt Amarinder Singh had failed miserably to deliver on his poll promise, that he had made to the people by holding Gutka Sahib, to take on the zombie of drugs and intoxicants within four weeks after assuming power.
“Two and a half years have lapsed since his Government took the reins of the State but nothing has come out of the narrative,” he said.
Mann also urged the Government to set up more rehabilitation centres in the State to treat the drug addicts. “It should also generate enough employment avenues so the youths should go to their jobs instead of getting hitched by the menace of drugs and contribute in rebuilding a drug-free prosperous Punjab,” he said.
Maintaining that the Congress Governemnt was “insensitive” to the problem, Mann said that had the Capt Amarinder Government been a little alive to the menace of drugs and given jobs to the youth, thousands of innocent lives would have been saved.
Referring to the death of 22-year-old Patiala youth in Ropar district due to drug overdose recently, Mann regretted that not a day passed when deaths by drug overdose were not reported from the state.