Alcohol Control in Bangladesh

Inebriation is nothing but a voluntary madness. Life is too beautiful. Human beings should be more serious about no narcotics.

Here I am going to write about a very good friend of mine who was depressed for some reasons. So, after suffering much from depression for a long time, he started drinking alcohol to get rid of his depression and within a few months he became addicted. After a few months of regular alcohol drinking, he had had his first panic attack and now he has to face this mental disorder often. His physical and mental health, career, dreams, relationships, in one word,his whole life is negatively affected just because of taking the consumption of alcohol as a cure for depression. one of the worst experiences of my life is watching him drowning and can't convince him that he can save his life just by avoiding alcohol. If alcohol wasn't available to him, then may be the scenario would be different.

There are billions of alcoholics and drug addicts in our societies who are ruining their beautiful life every now and then.In a developing country like Bangladesh the amount of alcoholics is not that much less. More than half a million people of the country are addicted to Narcotics. According to World Health Organisation ( WHO), In 2016, More than 2000 people died of liver cirrhosis due to consumption of narcotics and 1000 more people died due to cancer and road accidents while they were drunken.

So,It's high time to control consumption of Narcotics otherwise, our future generation will be destroyed just like my friend.

According to WHO's report, there are strict laws on Narcotics in Bangladesh but their monitoring system is very ineffective. But why is our monitoring system ineffective?

The Department of Narcotics Control under the Ministry of Home Affairs is charged with the responsibility of implementing policies formulated by the National Narcotic Control Board (NNCB) of Bangladesh. DNC has a total of 1706 sanctioned manpower while the number of vacant post is 747. It is almost impossible to get the desired results in the fight against Narcotic addiction with this little manpower. There are shortage of many needed components like cars, office equipments and most importantly arms. It is difficult to catch drug smugglers without sufficient arms. DNC's current Director General ( DG), MD: Jamal Uddin said, "DNC needs 7 times manpower than it has currently"

On the condition of anonymity, a DNC official said " Most of the former Director Generals used to take bribes from the Narcotic dealers. One DG was was impartial and neutral whom the Narcotic importers fired by the help of some powerful political leaders. " No one is kept in DG and ADG post for a long time. The authority remove them before they understand the whole process and their exact duties. In the last 28 years, 32 Director generals have been changed. It's quiet easy to understand that,most of the time illegal Syndicates are backed by the political leaders.

Again, on the condition of anonymity, a senior Police officer, who is in charge of anti-narcotics operations, said, "where is the Narcotics sold, who sells these and how narcotics is being sold is at the footsteps of field-level Police officers."

Reporter Sheikh Sabiha Alam talked with some Narcotic-dealers. One of them said, " one part of Police Officers is involved in Narcotic business in 3 ways. some take Narcotics, some rescue narcotics and resell those and some help the dealers taking bribes from them. Despite the Police investigation how these Narcotics are still being sold? A dealer answered Saying, "Illegal businesses are always backed by the Police and political leaders. Before any investigation specific police officers inform us and we move away fast. Obviously,we do give them a huge amount of bribe "

Also, new types of drugs are spreading but the Department is running by the old laws. According to old law, if an accused is arrested with low quantity of drugs, he can be released in bail. Such limitations of old laws need to be reformed .

So,now it is very clear why the monitoring system of our country is so ineffective in spite of having strict laws.

There is no firmly ordered managing system.The bottom layer officers aren't supervised and controlled by the higher layers.Even higher layer officers are also corrupted or politically partial or forced to remain silent.

The salaries offered to government officials are really insufficient , so they depend on bribes.They don't care about exactly what is expected of them. Since in our country government officials enjoy tenure of their working life they don't care about any kind of responsibility or accountability except political accountability.

Therefore, lack of accountability,lack of transparency, shortage of manpower, insufficient salaries, political interference, ineffective laws, ineffective monitoring system all are responsible for these wrong doings.

Thank You.