The Haryana Police Wednesday organised a meeting of top police officials of several northern states and Union Territory Chandigarh aimed at evolving strategies for fighting drug abuse and trafficking.
During the meeting, organised on the occasion of International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking here, challenges of drug abuse and trafficking, and strategies to combat the same were discussed, officials said.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar also addressed the participants during the concluding session in the evening.
Khattar urged the police officers to adopt a three-pronged strategy-- Treatment, Enforcement and Awareness (TEA) -- which, he said, is considered most important to combat the menace of drugs from society.
Addressing the senior police officers, Khattar said police should increase the enforcement and maximum awareness should be given in the society in coordination with various departments concerned.
He also asked the police officers to work together to achieve the goal of making the northern region completely drug free.
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"All the states should join hands and coordinate regularly to completely eradicate the drug menace" he said.
It was also decided to learn best practices of other states to speed up the fight against drug menace in the region.
Khattar later told reporters that special training courses would be arranged for investigating officers handling the cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act to ensure maximum conviction of culprits in the state.
To make the fight against drugs a success, he said an inter-state drug secretariat has already been set up at Panchkula for data and information sharing to effectively tackle the issue of drug menace in the northern region.
Khattar said fighting drug menace was a common cause, while pointing out that it was not any particular state's problem.
"We will have to work together and find a solution," he said.
He, however, admitted that drug menace was lesser in the hill states like Uttarakhand and Himachal, while it was more in states like Haryana, Punjab and Delhi.
Last year, a joint meeting of chief ministers and officers of northern states was held on August 20 to effectively deal and eradicate the menace of drugs from the society.
Meanwhile, a senior Haryana Police official said the objective behind organising the meeting was to bring the required synergy and coordination of efforts among police forces of the northern region for combating the activities of organised gangs and smuggling network active in the region.
He said major areas of concern, which were discussed and shared with other counterparts, included an overview of overall drug scenario in the northern region, role of intelligence sharing and coordinated operations, creating inter-state database of drug smugglers and effective enforcement of provisions of the NDPS Act.
Earlier, Haryana DGP Manoj Yadava apprised the chief minister about fruitful deliberations held with the senior police officials.
Chandigarh DGP Sanjay Baniwal, ADGP CID Himachal Pradesh, Ashok Tiwari, ADGP Intelligence Uttarakhand, V Vinay Kumar, ADGP (law and order) Haryana, Navdeep Singh Virk, ADGP Punjab, Gurpreet Deo, Special CP Delhi, Parveer Rajan, among other senior police officers from Punjab, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Narcotics Crime Bureau, and Intelligence Bureau were also present at the meeting.