UNODC is cosponsor of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS - UNAIDS
Beware, Illegal medicines becoming bigger in drug smuggling trade
Disclaimer: The news story on this page is the copyright of the cited publication. This has been reproduced here for visitors to review, comment on and discuss. This is in keeping with the principle of 'fair dealing' or 'fair use'. Visitors may click on the publication name, in the news story, to visit the original article as it appears on the publication's website.
06 March 2008
New Delhi, India
The quantity of heroin smuggled into India from Pakistan keeps going up, while there is a growing menace in the illegal drug trade - pharmaceuticals meant for abuse are being smuggled from India to all other South Asian countries in increasing quantities, said a UN report released in Delhi on Wednesday.
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said in its 2007 report that international drug trafficking syndicates, mostly organised gangs from West African countries, have been using India as a major transit country for Europe-bound drug consignments and also as a destination country.
"Law enforcement agencies in the north-western parts of India are seizing ever increasing quantities of heroin originating in Afghanistan and coming via Pakistan en route to Europe," said Rajiv Walia, project coordinator in the Regional Office for South Asia of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Providing the regional highlights of the report, Walia also said: "South Asia is being targeted for cocaine trafficking, with West African gangs bringing it here and exchanging it for heroin that they smuggle into Europe".
The report said that cocaine abuse was increasing in India, a contention contested by the director of the country's Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), R.K. Verma, who said: "I think there are some inaccuracies in the report".
Verma was the chief guest at the report release function.
Walia said drug traffickers were increasingly misusing courier companies to smuggle illicit drugs. In July 2007, NCB intercepted two parcels containing more than a kg of heroin in a courier company office here; one parcel was destined for Canada and the other for South Africa.
"Internationally controlled pharmaceutical preparations manufactured locally in India are also increasingly being diverted to some European countries and the United States," the report said.
INCB called upon the Indian government "to reinforce its control over the national and international trade in psychotropic substances".
