Kick bottle, get kick with drugs

By SNV Sudhir


Visakhapatnam, June 16: Tipplers who cannot spare cash to buy a liquor bottle these days are not worried. Two capsules of Spasmo Proxyvon that costs less than Rs 10 gives them an equally good ‘kick’. Many youngsters who get paltry pocket money and cannot buy liquor are now turning towards ‘habit-forming drugs’ available across the counter.

The medical shops too are happy to provide them to the youth even though it is against the law to sell them without prescription and could lead to cancellation of their license. They are also not deterred by the closure of several shops by drug inspectors.

Apart from Spasmo Proxyvon, several other habit-forming drugs are on sale including Corex, Phensedyl, Cofband, Linctuscodeine, Siricodeine, Exiplon, Tusq, Rexcof, Codistar and other codeine phosphate based cough syrups and Fortwin injections. Realising that these medical shops have become "drugstores" in the wrong sense of the word, police has also swung into action.

Recently in a joint operation, the task force police and the Drugs Control Authority caught five college students including one girl who were purchasing Fortwin injections from a medical shop near Appu Ghar on the Beach Road. They also arrested one Vijaya who was selling the injections to the students. The students were taken to the City Police Commissioner, Mr N. Sambasiva Rao, who counselled them and set them free.

"Children tend to develop these habits because of lack of proper parental care," said the commissioner. "Parents have to guide children and also monitor their habits. We will surely curb the sale of these habit-forming drugs. At the same time parents also should take care of their wards." DCA officials have also started conducting regular raids on various pharmacy stockists and retailers.

Preliminary investigations revealed that some medical shops in the city and neighbouring Vizianagaram have been involved in the supply of these drugs in huge quantities against rules. Many stockists had supplied huge quantities of Corex, Spasmo Proxyvon and Fortwin to the shops.

"A local retailer in Dwarakanagar sold 14, 073 bottles of Rexcof cough syrup worth Rs 13 lakh in just six months," said Mr R. Udaya Bhaskar, the drug licensing authority of the district.

It was a used bottle found on the Beach Road which prompted the DCA to start an investigation. "We tracked the supplier in Vijayawada in whose records we found that the name of the local retailer," said Mr Bhaskar. After police and DCA started taking stern steps, suppliers of the drugs also changed their modus operandi. They are now dispatching the medicines to obscure medical shops in rural areas. Regular users visit these shops to get their fix.

DCA officials found out that a small medical shop in in Jamadevi village on the national highway near Vizianagaram district sold 16,000 capsules of a habit-forming drug in four months. "This is more than the population of the entire village," said Mr Bhaskar. The DCA cancelled 70 drugs sale licenses and suspended 187 licences in the last financial year. Out of the suspended licences, 85 per cent related to sale of habit-forming drugs. "We come across 10 such cases every month," said Mr Bhaskar. "Last month we launched prosecution against 20 persons."