Drugs glut Guwahati; trapped teens are salesmen

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: Essential commodities may be a scarce in Guwahati during the corona-induced lockdown, but not drugs. This is what police say to describe the enormity of drug menace in the city and elsewhere in the State.

The modus operandi that has been adopted by the drug dealers to widen their network is a perfect example of social decadence. According to police sources, a teen first takes the taste of drugs with his own money, maybe stolen from his family. However, after being addicted if he doesn't have enough money to buy drugs regularly, he is used as a sales agent by the drug dealers by giving him his daily dosage. This, according to police sources, is the way how drug dealers trap teens, including school-going ones, to widen their network and reach.

According to police sources, such teens take ganja to begin with, and take other drugs slowly one after another. Licko, a cough syrup, is also in use among the addicts. Mostly consumed drugs in Guwahati and elsewhere in the State are heroin and brown sugar, a gram of which costs around Rs 600-800. Other drugs that are being sold in the State are N-10 commonly called as 'badam' among the addicts, SP tablets, Yaba tablets etc. While SP tablet is known for its pain killing effect, Yaba tablet is infamous for stimulating sex, police sources said.

Guwahati has a number of points from where drugs are sent to various areas by sales agents, a number of whom are trapped teens who cannot get out of the network because of addiction.

The drug network in the Northeast is a widespread one. The business, according to police sources, is controlled from Guwahati, Nagaon, Dibrugarh and Karimganj in the State. While Jonai, Lakhimpur and Dhemaji get drug supplies from Arunachal Pradesh, supplies from Myanmar come to Assam via Manipur and Mizoram, police sources said, and added that drugs supplies make it to Karimganj district in the Barak Valley from Tripura.

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