Gandhi drafts Bill to amend NDPS Act

Tribune News Service

Patiala, July 13

Local MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi today said he would move a Bill to amend the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.

In a press statement issued here, he said a draft of the Bill had been prepared by a group of Delhi-based lawyers and professionals. It would be discussed with politicians, lawyers, psychiatrists, academicians, social activists, drug users, religious leaders and media professionals later this week to give it a final shape.

Stating that the objective of the amendment is the destruction of the drug mafia, Dr Gandhi said: “It appears that stricter punitive measures are not helping the matter, but only making it worse. This calls for the modernisation of the Indian drug policy. The objective of the Bill is to demolish the nexus of politicians, police and peddlers (collectively known as drug mafia) who are spreading the menace of synthetic drugs in the country and have succeeded in substituting the common man’s recreational drugs like opium, opium husk and bhang with it.”

“To treat drug addicts as a patients and not criminals,” is another objective of the amendment,” he said.

Dr Gandhi said the amendment that would legalise common recreational drugs like bhukki (poppy husk), bhang and opium would be moved in Parliament as a private member Bill in the monsoon session.