Lohit, Changlang and Tirap districts face drug menace

Itanagar, July 23 (UNI) Lohit, Tirap and Changlang districts of Arunachal Pradesh located along the infamous Golden Triangle are facing the threat of drug menace, eroding the social fabric of these areas.

Speaking to UNI, Namsai Community Health Centre (CHC) de-addiction programme officer Rabi Kipa informed that drug abuse was going on unabated in these districts and they were helpless in the face of acute shortage of infrastructure and logistic support from the government.

''Drug related patients daily visit our outpatient department but we are helpless under the circumstances since there are no medicines and infrastructure to deal with such situations,'' he explained.

Dr Kipa said, ''We are forced to refer the visiting patients to neighbouring Dibrugarh in Asom and Dimapur in Nagaland for de-addiction treatment since Arunachal Pradesh had no centre of its own,''.

Citing the example of a person arrested on July 17 with 5 gm of brown sugar and two more last week in related case by Namsai police, Dr Rabi said these persons were arrested on earlier occasions as well for trafficking drugs from Asom. Such arrests are normal and these persons belong to respectable families, sources said.

But rampant availability of drugs in the neighbouring areas coupled with large scale unemployment, probably after banning of timber operation could be possible reasons for unabated abuse of these deadly narcotic substances, he explained.

Dr Rabi further informed that the addicts and traffickers mainly were unemployed persons with no source of income.

Such rampant drug abuse and trafficking in the region apart from leading to large scale law and order problems could also give impetus to the growing HIV or AIDS menace in the state.

It is worth mentioning here that heroin and brown sugar trafficking is rampant in Namsai, Chongkham and Mahadevpur areas of Lohit district, besides Kharsang, Miao, Bordumsa and Diyun areas of Changlang district and Deomali in Tirap district-all adjacent to the infamous Golden Triangle.

Moreover, Kharsang and Chongkham are the worst affected areas and the police is yet to devise innovative means to apprehend the traffickers.

UNI XC SP/RR GC1013