Home Minister Flags 8.2m Drug Addicts, Outlines Tough New Measures

Bangla Press Desk: Bangladesh is home to an estimated 8.2 million drug addicts, driven primarily by the rapid spread of synthetic and semi-synthetic narcotics, the home minister has said.

Salahuddin Ahmed shared the figures on Thursday during an event at the Ministry of Home Affairs conference room in the Secretariat, ahead of the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Jun 26.

He officially distributed grant cheques to 15 private drug rehabilitation facilities at the function.

According to him, the government has greenlit a Tk 14.13 billion blueprint to build state-of-the-art, 200-bed treatment and rehabilitation hubs across seven divisional cities.

To back the private sector's frontline response, the ministry is rolling out Tk 11 million in grants divided among 73 non-government rehab units.

The minister conceded that current laws are falling short in breaking up drug cartels, leaving Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) operatives outmatched on the ground.

He explained that while heavily armed syndicates carry advanced weaponry, frontline narcotics officers are completely weaponless -- essentially taking knives to gunfights -- making a legal overhaul urgent.

A new legislative framework is being fast-tracked to parliament this session to fix the security gap, the minister said.

The drug crisis is also clogging up the legal system, with Salahuddin pointing out that a staggering 80,000 narcotics lawsuits are sitting in limbo in Dhaka alone, alongside thousands of other cases stalled in district courts.

Given the scale of the backlog, conventional court procedures alone would struggle to handle the caseload, he said.

To address the issue, the government has sent a proposal to establish special tribunals for drug-related offences, while trials will also continue in regular courts, the minister added.