With the seizure of drugs worth Rs Four Crore from 938 firms under Drug and Cosmetics Act, Punjab government on Monday said there has been a massive decline in the numbers of new drug abusers in the state in the last one year.

The drugs would be destroyed in a phased manner beginning today and would further intensify our crackdown to take our mission to make Punjab Drug Free to its logical end, state health minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said.

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Speaking after handing over appointment letters to 13 new recruited analysts here at Chandigarh, the minister said Punjab is on its way to become drug-free.  He further said that these seizures include 5,42,425 tablets, 57,340 capsules, besides 4,654 injections and 1,190 syrups. The Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), in its pursuance to provide safe and efficacious drugs to the people of Punjab has made untiring efforts to weed out the menace of drug abuse from the state.

During this campaign large quantity of drugs were seized by the department from the firms for violations of Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 and Rules 1945, the minister further added.

Underlining the Amarinder Singh government’s firm resolve to weed out drugs menace from the state, Balbir Sing Sidhu pointed out the state FDA has already restricted the sale of eight types of drugs in the state i.e drugs formulations containing the narcotics drugs.

These include diphenoxylate, dextropropoxyphene, codeine and their salts, psychotropic substances buprenorphine, pentazocine, nitrazepam and their salts and tramadol and tapentadol in solid oral dosage. Sidhu said around ninety percent of the licensed chemists of the state are not allowed to stock and sale these drugs formulations and only those chemists are allowed whose shops are inside or outside the hospitals.

Taking strict action against the violators, a large number of drug licenses were suspended or cancelled. The department has also made amendments in the drug policy to control the mushrooming of chemist shops in the urban and rural areas.

Speaking on the occasion the FDA commissioner Kahan Singh Pannu, said that for effective control of the purchase, sale and distribution of certain habit forming drugs, the department has also framed guidelines that no habit-forming drugs shall be supplied by the manufacturer or traders without written authentic order of the purchaser and payment against such supplies shall necessarily be made through approved sources i.e. either by cheque, draft or RTGs mode of transactions.