Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara on Friday demanded a debate at the national level favouring a strong legislation with stringent provisions, including death penalty, against drug peddlers.
Replying to a debate in the Legislative Assembly on the ways and means of checking drug menace, Dr. Parameshwara, who also holds Home portfolio, noted that Malaysia had provision for punishing drug peddlers with death penalty.
He said drug peddlers would be booked under the Goonda Act and he would soon convene a meeting of senior officers from the departments of Police, Health, Excise, and Education to deliberate on how to check the menace.
Stating that drug menace was nothing new, he recalled his student days 30 years ago on the campus of the University of Agricultural Sciences – Bengaluru where a fellow student had become a drug addict. “But by the time we completed the course, he looked like his pale shadow of his earlier self,” Dr. Parameshwara said.
Health Minister Shivananda Patil said his department was holding discussions with the Home Department about the need to put in a system to take up joint consultations on drug menace with the Excise Department.
Earlier, BJP member R. Ashok demanded constituting a special squad to check drug mafia and also appointing specialised investigation officers to handle such cases. He expressed concern that drugs could now be ordered through darknet.
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Dr. Parameshwara told the Assembly that drugs were being manufactured in some houses in areas such as Kodigehalli en route to the Kempegowda International Airport. Police investigation had showed that some of the houses were producing drugs in the form of tablets for being sent to other areas, in the guise of being pharmaceutical companies, he said.