Drug use on rise in Baddi-Nalagarh area

Tribune News Service

Solan, July 28

The use of sedatives and narcotics is on the rise in the industrial belt of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh with the police nabbing miscreants every other day.

In the latest case, the Nalagarh police nabbed a youth Mukesh Kumar with 20 bottles of cough syrup Corex at Sobanmajra last night around 12.30 am. He could not produce any licence or prescription slip for possessing this cough syrup which was widely misused by addicts for the presence of codeine.

This syrup can’t be sold without a prescription slip since it falls under the schedule category which requires a medical prescription from a authorised medical practitioner.

Corex is a combination of chlopheniramine maleate and codeine syrup. It figured among the 344 drug combinations banned by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in March this year as experts had pointed out that it had no therapeutic justification. It was a major profit earner of the Pfizer Inc’s India limited which manufactured it. Though the company had a unit at Baddi too the seized cough syrup was manufactured at its Maharashtra-based unit.

A case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act has been registered against him and further investigations were underway, said DSP Sahil Arora.