Burning questions

Every year on June 26, Anti-Narcotics Day, lectures and debates are organised on the problem of drug addiction and drug abuse. Government dr...

Every year on June 26, Anti-Narcotics Day, lectures and debates are organised on the problem of drug addiction and drug abuse. Government drug trafficking control agencies, non-governmental organisations and the Narcotics Control Bureau NCB make agitated sounds. The fever that is worked up in June cools down soon after.

This Anti-Narcotics Day, the NCB ordered burning of all the seized consignments of heroin, morphine, opium, hashish and ganja worth crores of rupees that have been seized in police raids and are piling up in government warehouses and godowns. Most of these drugs are of plant origin. Burning of either the unharvested plants or their end products is a problem because plants may have a number of other economic uses. What is needed, therefore, is an intelligent and eco-friendly strategy of drug disposal.

Opium derived from the poppy plant, Papaver somniferum, produces over two dozen alkaloids which have been mentioned in ancient pharmacopeia. Cocaine derived from the leaves of Erythroxylon cocoa has important properties to cure stomachaches, for instance.

Most of the alkaloids derived from these plants have found room in ancient systems of Indian medicine. So, an introspection is in order to find out whether the strategy of burning the drugs is the right one. It must also be kept in mind that the Central Pollution Control Board CPCB has expressed reservations on the burning of the drugs on grounds of environmental pollution. According to the CPCB, after burning these alkaloids generate harmful compounds which may cause fatal respiratory problems.

Till now we have been concentrating more on drug addiction, drug abuse and drug trafficking. Disposal has never been talked about. We must urgently address this problem, making use of biotechnological innovations. Most of these alkaloids are secondary metabolites and are of high medicinal value. Their properties can be altered by gene insertion. We can develop efficient protocols to extract the useful products and discard the harmful ones. Codeine and morphine can serve as efficient analgesics. Opiate drugs produce their analgesic effect by preventing pain signals from being transferred from the spinal cord to the brain. A group of researchers from the National Institute of Drug Abuse NIDA New York is exploring ways to improve the spinal administration of opiate analgesics. Because of some side effects, physicians often under-prescribe them. These perceptions linger even though studies have found that the fear of becoming addicted to opiates used clinically to treat pain is unfounded.

Drug abuse and addiction is a problem but more severe is the problem of drug disposal. We must come up with a policy on drug disposal, using the knowledge and wisdom of the scientific community. Thus can a bane be turned into a boon.

The writer is a research scholar at the department of botany, Delhi University