Drug menace more prevalent in other states, opposition trying to defame us: Punjab CM

Amritsar (Punjab):  Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday rubbished claims that drug menace is enveloping Punjab and said that the opposition parties are raising the issue to defame his party. Addressing a press conference here, Badal said that the magnitude of drug problem is much higher in other state in comparison to Punjab. "The opposition is raking up the drug issue to defame our party. Magnitude of drug problem is much less than that in many other states of the country," said Badal. Senior lawyer and AAP member H.S. Phoolka yesterday accused Punjab ministers of being indifferent to the ground realities of drug addiction in the state. "The problem is that these Punjab ministers are so away from ground realities. Whenever they go in public, they are always surrounded by their security guards, nobody is allowed to meet them, and so, they do not even know the truth, and neither do they want to know about it," Phoolka told ANI. Punjab Health Minister Surjit Kumar Jyani claimed that a survey conducted in ten districts of Punjab revealed that only 1.8 percent of the population is addicted to drugs. "We had conducted a survey in ten districts of Punjab. It shows that 1.8 percent of the population is addicted to drugs; we didn't conduct the survey in all the 22 districts of the state," Jyani told the media in Amritsar, during a function on International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking at the Swami Vivekananda Drug De-addiction centre. He also said that the ruling dispensation in Punjab is committed to tackle the drug menace.