The challenges emerging from this were discussed at a high-level meeting of anti-narcotics sleuths of major north Indian states which was convened here by the central Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for making concerted efforts to curb the menace.
NCB chief Rajiv Mehta, sources said, underlined the "challenge" these agencies will have to face in the wake of the pullout of US and allied forces from Afghanistan as it is expected that heroin production and opium cultivation in that country would go up by many notches which will subsequently be pushed through the traditional border routes from Pakistan or Nepal to India.
"The opium production in Afghanistan in 2013 was in a record area of over five-lakh acres and this is expected to increase in the aftermath of NATO and US forces withdrawl. Drugs smuggling from Myanmar is also in expected to be in large numbers and India is geographically sandwiched between these two countries," officials privy to the meeting said.
The meeting, an annual affair, saw anti-narcotics chiefs of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Chandigarh, Rajasthan and Delhi meeting for a day-long session.
The meeting also decided to increase cooperation and coordination amongst all these states and agencies so that the idea mooted by Modi of saying "no" to drugs could be implemented on a big scale.