Md Joynal Abedin Khan :
Around 90 lakh addicts, mainly youths, consume poisonous yaba considering it as oxygen for supporting their frustrated lives.
They are habituated with the ‘fashionable drug item yaba’ for its available stock because of the smooth smuggling and peddling with the assistance of vested quarters all over the country in recent years.
Most worryingly, the biggest victimized youths who abuse crazy medicine yaba as ‘oxygen’ and panacea since they cannot survive even for a day, said official sources of Narcotics Control Bangladesh (DNC) quoting addicts.
It is said, many officials of Police, Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), Coast Guard, also echoed with the DNC men and said that yaba addicts speculated it as only way of saving lives like oxygen.
After releasing from Dhaka Central Jail, Montu Mia, a yaba consumer, told The New Nation, “I have lost all my hopes and target of life. I have become addicted after being influenced by one of my friends who obtained his graduate degree from a private university in the city’s Banani area. Now it is impossible to survive without yaba like oxygen for an ICU patient”.
The consumption of yaba pills raised alarming from cities to remote areas. It has already created panic among the guardians, statesmen and law enforcers as crimes like murder, snatching, extortion and abduction happen for collecting Tk 300 to Tk1,500 for per piece of yaba, they said.
Only 10 per cent of the drug could be seized while 90 percent flowed into the market. That was a huge figure, according to them.
“Around 90 per cent of the yaba enter Bangladesh from across the Naf River. There was a time when yaba used to come through land border. Now the bulk of it is carried on boats to Teknaf and Cox’s Bazar. From there it spreads through a cobweb of network. In September 2017, Police caught a cache of 7.30 lakh yaba pills and showed in the seizure list as 8,000 pieces only. The police sold the rest to yaba dealers for Tk eight crore,” they said.
In the latest, few misguided law enforcers seized over 3,00,00,000 yaba tablets in the first four months of this year and over 4,00,00,000 pills were seized in 2017, but in the seizure list very nominal number was shown, according to data of the DNC.
Total seizures of yaba pills were 36,543 in 2008 to 812,716 in 2010, 1,951,392 in 2012, 6,512,869 in 2014 to 29,450,178 in 2016, the report said.
Even 64.44 and 32.56 people have become new addicts influenced by friends and self-curiosity respectively, it mentioned.
Following the yaba in everywhere, law enforcers awarded punishment to at least 2,000 people on charge of drug smuggling, consuming and trading. The law enforcers also arrested more than 500 people and at least 20 alleged people were killed during the ongoing drive which began on May 4 after getting alert and instruction from the premier.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Saturday said, “The government was practising zero tolerance policy to control the drug business. If anyone found guilty of extrajudicial killings; he will be brought to justice.”
Police have adopted a “Zero Tolerance Policy” against drugs to make the society free from drug, said Inspector General of Police (IGP) Mohammad Javed Patwary in Rajshahi recently.
Around 75 per cent addicts take yaba and 65 per cent yaba addicts are students aged between 10 to 35. Over 50 per cent addicts are involved in crimes, the IGP added.
He further said, “We’ll work maintaining coordination with other law enforcement agencies to protect our people, especially the youths, from the drug addiction. Social awareness is needed to fight the menace of drug abuse and dealing,.”
Lt Col Mahfuzer Rahman, Director (operation) of the BGB, said that tablets are carried in mobile phones, secret chambers in cars, trucks or motorcycles, fuel tanks of bikes and even inside holy books. Carriers swallow capsules containing the pills and also hide those inside rectum.
“We are very worried as we cannot make the graph [of yaba seizure] nosedive. In cases of other drugs, the graph sometimes goes up and sometimes down, but for yaba it is always upward. It is really alarming that it is going out of control.”
Ikram Hossain, Director (operations) of Bangladesh Coast Guard, said, mobile tracking of conversation in borders and engaging tax department to probe people who have palace-like houses in Teknaf and Shah Porir Dwip.
“It has become a national crisis. Yaba seems to have infected every profession,” said Mokhlesur Rahman, Additional Inspector General of Police (IGP) (admin and operation) of police.
“It gets very difficult to seize yaba once it spreads out. So we have to stop it at the border,” suggested the additional IGP.
Contacted, Jamal Uddin Ahmed, Director General of the Department of Narcotics Control, said, “We conduct raids on the hotspots and arrest drug traders from time to time. But the drug syndicate is so organised that they resume trade soon after the officials leave the spot.
“It will be better if we can engage some officials in keeping a round-the-clock watch on the spot,” he suggested.
Mukul Jyoti Chakma, DNC’s Deputy Director (Dhaka Metro), said last year they arrested 11,000 people in narcotics cases, but only five percent of them now in jails due to loopholes of the existing law.
Kabir Hossain, consumer and also a university graduate, said, “Price of Champa is very low, between Tk 120 and 140. But if you want something better like R7, you have to pay Tk 200-220.”
