"The menace of drug abuse has threatened to consume the young generation, but the Akalis and Congressmen were unfortunately engaged in a war of words over the percentage of drug addicts," outfit's spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh and youth affairs head Ranbir Singh said in a joint statement.
However, they termed the statement by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, that 70 per cent of Punjabi youth were drug addict, as "exaggerated".
"All parts of Punjab were in the octopus-like grip of different kinds of alcohol and drug abuse. It is a sad irony that the Punjabi is today leaning on loneliness, misery and stress," they said.
They accused successive governments at the Centre for the availability of drugs in Punjab, saying it was "either due to negligence or as part of a grand design".
"We believe at one level, it was a part of the design to engage the Punjabi youth in drugs as a weapon to check their political consciousness and to counter the fighting spirit in them," they said.
