More than meets the eye https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/more-than-meets-the-eye-324623 Oct 15, 2021 Julio Ribeiro
Empathy: Drug consumers should be treated like patients, requiring medical care rather than retributive justice. PTI
two informers, a BJP ‘karyakarta’, named Manish Bhanushali, and his friend, GP Gosavi, charged four times, thrice in Thane and once in Pune, of the offences of cheating, extortion and the like. They doubled up both as informants and NCB ‘constables’ used for escorting the frightened drug user, Aryan, into the NCB’s office from the court or some other place not indicated on television. Only the triumphant mugs of these worthies announcing their importance to the world was pictured on the TV screen.
The involvement of the ‘karyakarta’ leads me to suspect that there is a concerted attempt by the party in power, starting from the Sushant Singh Rajput investigation, to target Bollywood so that it falls in line with its grand design of bringing all elements of the media to heel. The National Socialist Party in Germany, before World War II, had perfected this subjugation of the film world to a fine art under the direction of its propaganda czar, Heinrich Goebbels.
I have heard an argument being made that the demand side is as important as the supply side in NCB’s mandate to curb this menace of drugs. When marginal and potential users learn of the arrests of famous individuals or their children, the temptation to indulge automatically reduces. This hypothesis has no feet to stand. The usage of drugs in some social circles is so rampant that the only thing that will help is cutting off the supply.
My own view is that drug consumers should be treated like patients in a doctor’s clinic, requiring medical care rather than retributive justice. The police need to concentrate on the pushers and the distributors who are the real menace. The NCB, when reminded of its responsibility in this regard, arrested a Nigerian national involved in the distribution network. It is a matter of concern that a disproportionately large number of the city’s Nigerian residents are mixed up in the drug trade.
