KATHMANDU, March 2: Nepal Police launched a mega-campaign against drug abuse on Saturday amid a grand ceremony attended by the home minister and most of the top-level officials from the police organization. The organization has, however, failed to adequately arm its Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), which is in a dilapidating state, in its fight against drug abuse.
Speaking at the program, Inspector General of Police Basant Kunwar encouraged all stakeholders to chip in proactive efforts for the reduction of the drug problem rampant in the country.
“No single agency can control and prevent drug abuse,” he said.
The police’s inability to single-handedly curb drug-related crimes seemingly stems from its neglect of the NCB. Scorned by most police officials as a ‘punishment posting’, the NCB operates from an old congested building in Koteshwar, which is difficult to find without the help of an online map.
In addition to the manpower and technology crunch, the infrastructure allocated to the bureau is sub-par as compared to other bureaus of the police. The bureau’s vehicles, already low in number, are old and break down regularly. The state of the toilets in the bureau is such that even the worst of the toilets in public hospitals would feel clean in comparison. The bureau pays a whopping Rs 210,000 in monthly rent for using the dilapidated building despite its majestic facade.
But these problems are minute when compared to the problems the bureau has to face at the policy level.
Nepal emerged as a major transit hub for cocaine trafficking in 2024 largely due to the lack of screening equipment and the policy restricting NCB’s access to check the passengers arriving from abroad at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA). Capitalizing on the lax security measures at the airport, traffickers have started using Nepal as a transit hub for high-end drugs such as cocaine that are transported to India for consumption via the porous border.
Nepal’s drug problem keeps piling up every year. While the cocaine problem has surfaced as a novel trend, both the consumption and export of drugs from Nepal has been increasing annually. IGP Kunwar highlighted in his speech at the anti-drug campaign launch that drug-related cases across the country increase by about 7 percent each fiscal year.
On top of these problems, a Herculean task that lurks in the lapse of policy is the difficulty to ban the pharmaceutical drugs that are increasingly being abused by substance abusers. Officials from the NCB have complained repeatedly that their recommendation for ban of certain pharmaceutical drugs that are widely being abused are routinely rejected by the Department of Drug Administration and the Home Ministry.
Former Spokesperson of the NCB Rameshwar Karki recollected that the last time such drug was banned by the home ministry was under Rabi Lamichhane’s leadership.
“He swiftly ordered the ban of Tramadol which has now emerged as the most abused pharmaceutical drug in Nepal,” SP Karki said.
Chief of the NCB Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Sudarshan Prasad Koirala told Republica that the bureau has urged the home ministry to ban two pharmaceutical drugs; Pregabalin and Spaspain; as they have been found to be abused. However, the ministry has refused to ban the drug.
SSP Koirala highlighted another major problem with controlling such drugs is the trend of mixing legal drugs to create newer narcotic drugs. “While this problem is difficult to address directly, the ban on drugs which are generally used for such purposes might help in decreasing the abuse of such mixtures,” SSP Koirala said.
Meanwhile, Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak, who has been unsupportive of the NCB’s request, made a tall claim at the anti-drug campaign launch that if all sides of the society are united, Nepal can soon be free of narcotic drugs.
“Let's launch a campaign to declare a local unit drug-free within 6 months,” he said, “Standing on the success of the campaign we can transform the entire nation into a drug-free nation within a short period of time.”
His remark that the local units need to take the initiative to create drug-free local units certainly feels good to the listeners, however, it remains unclear how the initiative from the local units, without firstly empowering the NCB, can increase security at the TIA, ban the use of increasingly abused drugs and decrease the consumption of drugs.