The Hindu Business Line : Narcotics Bureau calls meet to break medicine impasse

As per the NDPS Act, chemists are to keep meticulous records on the purchase of these drugs from companies and their subsequent sale to patients. Failure to produce these records on enquiry by the police can have chemists in jail for three months without bail, Mr Shinde said.

Mumbai , Feb. 6

IT may not exactly be re-tracing the "golden triangle," as the narcotics passage between some countries is euphemistically called.

But that is precisely the channel through which some psychotropic medicines from India have travelled through to Nepal, Pakistan and Iran.

And therein lies the origin of the current stalemate in India between chemists and the Indian Government over the sale of psychotropic drugs and the raids that some of these sales have attracted from the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), say pharma industry officials.

The NCB, however, has initiated the first step towards resolving the impasse by calling four pharma industry associations for a meeting, possibly next week.

They include the All-India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD), the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India, the Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association and the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance.

The meeting would be just in time, as shortages are already being felt across the country in segments including anti-depressants, epilepsy medicines, sleeping tablets, anti-cancer medicines and other post-operative care medicines, pharma-company officials said.

Chemists across the country had threatened to completely stop purchasing these drugs from February 1 to keep the police raids at bay, the AIOCD General Secretary, Mr J.S. Shinde, told Business Line.

But the protest is set to intensify next week, if the Centre does not intervene. A basket of psychotropic and central nervous system drugs, worth over Rs 1,000 crore, stands to get hit by the chemists' protest.

These drugs come under the purview of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.

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