The Hindu Business Line : Administer it right

TO SNARE THE big fish of the narcotics trade, the Centre spread the net on chemists and wholesalers but ended up with a catch it neither wanted nor intended: Genuine consumers. Old people requiring sleeping medicines, epileptic children, and patients suffering from anxiety disorders suddenly could not get psychotropic drugs, or cancer-care and central nervous system medicines as chemists stopped stocking them from February fearing laborious paper work. The Narcotics Control Bureau insisted that chemists retain for two years the details of every psychotropic medicine bought and sold. Failure to produce these documents on demand could result in the chemist being put behind bars for three months without bail.

Though drastic, the move by the Narcotics Control Bureau, the enforcing authority of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS), is understandable. For, the Bureau quotes a UN survey to make its point that abuse of pharmaceutical substances has outstripped that of traditional drugs such as ganja, charas and brown sugar. It claims that such medicines as diazepam, popularly known as Calmpose and Bunogesic (used as an anti-addictive), made by Indian drug companies, are being smuggled to Pakistan, Dubai and even Nigeria. Also the Bureau has received similar complaints on cough syrups and pain-killers from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. Thus the crackdown over the last several months to stop large-scale diversions of medicines. While the Bureau claims that the retail chemists are not the targets at all, the latter are not buying it. They complain that all chemists are being tarred with the same brush. Pharma companies too have been cautioned by the NCB to check out their distributors and not to do business with those with suspect antecedents. The industry must find a solution quickly before the issue tars the image of Indian drug companies abroad.

In 1986, the Finance Ministry had issued a note to the Drug Controller-General of India exempting from the contentious Rule 67 of the NDPS Act medicinal preparations containing psychotropic substances made under a valid manufacturing licence under the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945. But recent renewed enforcement of the NDPS Act turned the heat on the chemists all over again. Some short-term reprieve for consumers came on Thursday when the Centre went into a huddle with the pharma industry and trade to allow genuine sale of psychotropic medicine even while plugging their abuse and trafficking. The trade has deferred its freeze on the sale of psychotropic drugs till February 25, following assurances from the NCB that the contentious issues of the NDPS Act would be amended. And some progress in this direction is expected in the next 10 days. But with enforcement officials complaining that it is easier for a child to obtain an opium-based cough syrup from a chemist than a packet of brown sugar from a peddler, chemists too will have to take more responsibility on the sales they make. Not just to keep enforcers happy, but to keep genuine drugs from getting into illicit channels.

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