STF initiatives have paid off as 5L drug addicts get treatment, says ADGP

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 11

Claiming a major success against drug abuse during the lockdown period, Special Task Force chief ADGP Harpreet Singh Sidhu said 5,00,552 patients had been treated till May 6 since the STF was formed in 2017.

Sidhu said the OOAT clinic programme was a success. Besides, the Drug Abuse Prevention Officers (DAPO) programme supervises community activities for preventing drug abuse and to link the drug users with de-addiction centres. Nearly 5.43 lakh DAPOs have already been registered, of whom 88,710 are officials and 4,54,332 are volunteers, he said.

Sidhu said the STF had designed a comprehensive action against drug abuse (CADA) strategy based on enforcement-de-addiction-prevention (EDP) approach.

He revealed that 14.90 lakh persons had been made aware about ill-effects of drug abuse. Besides, 2.05 lakh drug abuse victims had been contacted, out of which 98,278 had been sent to de-addiction/OOAT centres.