Setting the ball rolling for a greater vigil and enforcement to control the drug menace, the Chief Ministers of northern States on Thursday described drugs as a "national problem" and decided to set up a joint working group to share experiences and best practices to tackle the menace.
At the second Regional Conference on Drug Menace, Challenges and Strategies here, the States expressed concern over the inflow of drugs from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria and other countries, and called for closer collaboration to fight the problem and make the region "drugs free".
In a joint statement, the Chief Ministers of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as top officials from Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, and Chandigarh, agreed on a series of powerful measures to eradicate the drugs problem in the region. The event was also attended by officials of the Intelligence Bureau, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and other central agencies. The measures included joint operations at the interstate borders, information sharing and implementation of the best practices of the participating states.
There was consensus among the states on the importance of strengthening the information-sharing mechanism on drugs, drug dealers and smugglers for an effective crackdown. The states agreed to launch major awareness programmes to make the eradication of drugs a peoples' movement, it said. The single-day conference recognised drugs as a national problem that needed collective efforts of all the states for its successful eradication. It proposed to jointly press the Centre to come out with a national drugs policy in order to effectively tackle the menace.