Amarinder Singh calls for drug policy day after Sidhu’s opium remark

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh spoke on the drug menace in his state on Monday, a day after Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu backed an AAP MP’s call for legalising opium cultivation.

“India has to have a drug policy. You need to have a strict drug policy and ban these drugs. Whatever is required for the phrama industry, government can have a policy for that. But letting it be grown by states, we know how it leaks out of states and into markets which is Punjab,” Singh told ANI.

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He warned that the lack of an effective drug policy is ruining the younger generation of his state.

Sidhu had on Sunday supported AAP MP Dharamvir Gandhi’s demand for legalisation of opium cultivation.

“Dharamvir Gandhi is doing a very good thing, I support him. My uncle used to take opium as a medicine and lived a long life,” Sidhu said on Monday.

According to Hindustan Times, Sidhu said, “It (opium) is way better than ‘Chitta’ (heroin), which SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia introduced in the state, due to which parents have to see bodies of their children.”

According to reports, Gandhi, the AAP MP from Patiala, has been raising the issue of legalisation of opium for the last few years. In 2016, Gandhi introduced a private member’s bill in Lok Sabha seeking legalisation of “non-synthetic” intoxicants like opium and marijuana.

Reports say that Gandhi was part of a June 2018 the rally by farmers demanding removal of ban on cultivation of opium and marijuana.

The Punjab government under CM Amarinder Singh had earlier this year forwarded Gandhi’s proposal on opium to the Union Health Ministry.

Besides Gandhi, Akali Dal’s Rajya Sabha MP Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa is one of the major voices in the support for legalisation of opium in Punjab.