System surviving on patronage : Reach of drug cartel
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 28, 2012 -
Everyone is against drugs. Yet it continues to exact a heavy toll, not only on the individual user or abuser, but on society as a whole.
Corresponding to the menace that drugs wreak on human society is the burgeoning class of the drug traders, who are a power unto themselves. And under the classification of this 'everyone' come the State Government, the Assam Rifles, the CRPF, all Government agencies and various civil society organisations.
In as much as the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking sought to convey the joint concern of the international community over the increasing abuse of drugs, the spreading network of the drug cartel is very much a reality, from which there is no escaping.
Drug abuse cannot be seen in isolation of the presence of a powerful and influential drug cartel and herein hangs a tale, a powerful tale.
Who are the people who go on to form the cartel is a natural question that follows. Apart from the internationally notorious drug lords from the Golden Triangle, the Golden Crescent and heads of the drug mafias in countries like Mexico and Colombia, no one seems to know who are the people behind the drug cartel, especially in this part of the country, Manipur particularly.
The veil of secrecy runs deep. It also stands that the drug lords or the drug cartel cannot survive, much less flourish, without some sort of a patronage and it is this patronage which has time and again cocked a snook at the joint concerns demonstrated by the world against drug abuse and illicit trafficking.
Manipur cannot be an exception to this widely held observation, which is something that has not come out from the fertile imagination of some spin doctors.
Situated close to the infamous Golden Triangle, a porous international border, youth caught in a state of unrest, corruption writ large on successive Governments and lying on the transit route and Manipur is a fit case for rampant drug abuse and a flourishing drug cartel.
But more than this could be a surreptitious cord between the drug trade and those in positions of power whose influence may extend across the international boundary to the east and towards a bigger market to the west.
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Every now and then, stories of Government agencies, such as the NAB, the police and para-military forces impounding drugs do hit the pages of the newspapers but local pushers are just that, local pushers, who are expendable.
A former Finance Minister of the State Government caught at Guwahati with more than a generous dose of Heroin some years back may not exactly be the profile of the drug cartel in Manipur, but it does say something significant.
It was with a lot of passion and insight that a good number of well known personalities held fort on the menace of drugs on International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking and while the tragic ramification of drug abuse were dealt with at length, the day sadly did not throw much light on the existence of a system that provides sustenance to the drug trade.
Drug smuggling cannot exist in a void. The 'brotherhood' of the drug cartel indeed seems all too powerful and influential.
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