The Madras High Court on Thursday directed the State government to spell out steps it had taken against drug abuse by preventing pharmacies from selling pain killers and other drugs to minor children without a valid prescription.
Justices N. Kirubakaran and P. Velmurugan also wanted to know what was the percentage of juvenile drug addiction in the State and whether it was true that many schoolchildren were addicted to euphoria produced by pain relievers.
The Division Bench posed the questions while passing interim orders on a habeas corpus petition filed against the preventive detention of a person accused of abusing common psychoactive drugs available freely in local pharmacies.
The judges expressed surprise over the police not having included the medical shop owner as one of the accused in the criminal case and observed that hardcore criminals use juveniles to commit crimes by intoxicating the latter.
They stressed that the law enforcement agencies must concentrate on the source of such drug abuse and insisted on prosecuting the pharmacists too. They directed the police to spell out the number of such cases booked in the last 10 years.
Police was ordered to file a report within two weeks listing out the number of people arrested in such cases, the number of pharmacists shown as accused and whether proper steps were taken to suspend the licence of such pharmacists.
The judges further asked whether information regarding criminal cases booked against pharmacists were being shared with the Pharmacy Council of India, a statutory body under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, for appropriate action at its end.
