Coordination meeting on increasing narcotics surveillance held

The district coordination and monitoring meeting on narcotics control and eradication was held under the aegis of Collector V. Jayachandra Bhanu Reddy here on Saturday.

The meeting sought to ascertain the inter-departmental coordination in weaning out substance abuse at school level and at the level of community by cracking down on narcotics cultivation. The Collector urged the School Education Department to spread awareness on inter-personal deprivations caused by drugs, destroying all facets to a healthy life.

The Collector called for screening of villages for cultivation of narcotics through locals and urged the Forest Department to keep a close watch on the forest fringes for surveillance against narcotics. Further, villages free of narcotics cultivation must be declared so, the Collector said. The respective departments were also called to augment surveillance against narcotics in the district.

He also urged the Health Department to ensure that guidelines were issued to underline the significance of dispensing medicines only against prescriptions and discourage over-the- counter sale of medicines.

Early this week, Superintendent of Police Sarojkumar Thakur, in a press meet, said it was safe to declare that over 2,900 villages out of 3,000 villages in the district were free of narcotics and that there were sporadic instances of garden cultivation of ganja. Mr.Thakur had said that those too would soon be eradicated completely.