IN the latest incident, the members of Border Guard Bangladesh on Saturday shot dead two Rohinyga men in Teknaf while they were smuggling synthetic intoxicating drug Yaba. They entered at Rongikhali in Hnila area with Yaba. As BGB personnel asked them to stop, they jumped into the Naf river in a bid to flee away. The BGB men then shot them and recovered 45,000 Yaba pills from their possession. What we see that, despite ‘zero tolerance’ policy of the law enforcement agencies, the drug trade, particularly Yaba smuggling to Bangladesh, is going on unabated.
Newspapers quoting officials of Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) reported that different Myanmar separatist groups produce Yaba at 37 factories located in the Shan state – which shares borders with China, Laos, and Thailand – and smuggle them to different countries. About 13 types of Yaba are being produced at these factories; from where the drug smugglers collect Yaba and send them to dealers in Cox’s Bazar.
Narcotics officials said that number of drug addicts in Bangladesh is about 70 lakh. But other relevant departments said the number is around one crore. However, more than half of them are Yaba addicts. Only in capital city Dhaka, over one lakh women take Yaba pills regularly and majority of them are students. So, it’s easily imaginable how devastating the impact of Yaba is.
Meanwhile, several hundred people, most of them petty dealers, were killed in countrywide anti-narcotics drive that launched on May 21 last year. Over 10,000 have also been arrested in drug-related cases. Side by side, the National Parliament on October 27 passed the Narcotics Control Bill 2018 keeping the provision for death sentence or life imprisonment for anyone found carrying more than 200 grams of Yaba or more than 25 grams of heroin or cocaine. But the overall situation has not yet changed.
Drug abuse by the youths has become a national problem now. Apart from taking coordinated measures involving all related agencies and departments, the issue should also be included in the agenda by our Foreign Ministry to compel Myanmar to shut the bordering Yaba factories.
