Himachal Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday said the State Government has accorded top priority to deal with drug abuse and a massive campaign would be launched to curb this social vice.
Presiding over a meeting regarding drug menace campaign here, the Chief Minister said joint and earnest efforts were required for curbing this social vice. He said that recently on his initiative a meeting was held at Chandigarh where Chief Ministers of four neighbouring states and officers from three other states participated to chalk out a joint strategy to curb this. It was decided in the meeting that joint inspections and regular checkups would be conducted by the police teams of Himachal, Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand etc. in the border areas.
Thakur said a special awareness campaign would be launched in the educational institutions, particularly degree colleges to sensitise the students about ill effects of the drugs.
He said that departments such as Home, Health, Education, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Information and Public Relations and Social Justice would be involved in a big way to check this vice. He said that all these departments should nominate nodal officers for effective coordination with the other departments. The Chief Minister said it was unfortunate that conviction rate was low in the State as compared to the neighbouring states, adding that police personnel must be trained so that serious case and charges could be framed against the drug peddlers. He said special focus should be laid on rehabilitation of drug addicts for which training to doctors, counsellors and other para-medical staff must be ensured for professionally manning de-addiction and rehabilitation centres.
Additional Chief Secretary Home, B.K. Aggarwal said a massive campaign would be launched to destroy cannabis in the state.
It was also decided that the Information and Public Relations Department would effectively use electronic, print and social media to sensitise the people regarding ill-effects of drug abuse.
Top officials of the state, including Chief Secretary Vineet Chawdhry, Additional Chief Secretary cum Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister Shrikant Baldi, Additional Chief Secretary Manisha Nanda, Additional Chief Secretary Nisha Singh, amongst others were present in the meeting.