by Franklin R. Satyapalan
Over one hundred thousand drug addicts in the country spend at least Rs. 500 million a day to purchase heroin, Police Narcotics Bureau Director SSP Pujitha Jayasundara said yesterday.

Speaking to ‘The Island’ he said that a drug awareness week was launched on June 23rd under the direction of Minister of Interior John Amaratunga. SSP Jayasundara said that the drug menace was the main reason behind the rising crime rate in the country.

With international crime rings resorting to narco terrorism and Sri Lanka being found to be the hub of transhipment of drug trade originating from fields in the Golden Triangle and Golden Crescent to the west. It was high time that Sri Lankans as a nation awoke to tackle the drug menace, a crisis the country had to solve next to solving the ethnic crisis, SSP Jayasundera said.

Would one believe that a 70-yer old courier arrested for swallowing drug at the airport confessed to being a courier on 28 occasions eariler. "A 13-year-old arrested with four packets of heroin at Slave Island claimed that he and several friends had been hooked to drug over the past two years". He said that Minister Suranimala Rajapakse who understood the gravity of drug mance had organised a drug awareness programme at school level this week through the Education Department setting aside a period of 45 minutes to create awareness and wean away the younger generation from the evil menace of heroin.

Meanwhile government sources said that the drug problem received priority in the two-hour long discussion between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe last Sunday. They jointly decided to create a high-powered authority to fight the drug menance as well as bring down the rising rate of organised crime in the country.