Pratapsing Rane hit the nail on the head when, during Assembly proceedings, he said “We blame a certain foreign community for drugs in Goa but the consumers are local.” Goa does certainly have a real drug problem. Granted, it may not be an Udta Goa, like Sr Rane claims, but it’s a problem nonetheless.
The biggest difference between Goa and Punjab, is that the northern state’s drug problem concerns cheap chemical lab created drugs, available in local shops for Rs 50-100. In Goa, there is no such issue. Here, we have drugs for recreation. Users here don’t do it to escape from unemployment woes or because the entire village depends on it as an industry. Here, it’s done for ‘fun’.
But how do we deal with it? The first step is acceptance. When Arvind Kejriwal stated that Goa had a drug problem, local politicians were up in arms claiming that it would ruin the tourism industry. The fact is, that a certain percentage of the tourism industry flourishes because of the drug industry in Goa. But, the bigger problem to tackle is consumption by locals.
At the start of 2016, the Goa Engineering College drug arrests shocked the State, but since then the ruckus around it has died down. People continue to have arguments on facebook about where a casino boat should be anchored in the river Mandovi, but there have been no sit-ins or widespread protests regarding the drug issue in Goa, not even in the northern villages where the mafia resides and where the hubs are. Politicians need to stop skirting the issue and work towards cleaning up this mess.
One step in that direction would be to revive the panel that was looking into the drug-police-politician nexus. This would, of course, require politicians to put pen to paper to restart it. Secondly, nabbing small-time users or carriers does not solve the issue. It requires a task force dedicated to weeding out the drug hubs that exist in Goa as well as the key areas where smuggling takes place.
Even in America which wages one of the biggest wars against drugs, and is the reason why India banned the use of marijuana and hashish, the harder drugs war rages against chemical drugs like meth and pills. This is because they are far more addictive and harmful than natural substances like marijuana and hashish.
Goa’s drug industry existed since the late 1960s and has grown since then. None of this would have happened without the co-operation of locals. The need of the hour is to recognise this and accept it as an issue and deal with it firmly, instead of pointing fingers at groups or communities, thereby shrugging off any responsibility. There is a drug problem in Goa. Who else is going to acknowledge that?
