India Congress Leader Manish Tewari expressed his concerns over the "fast spreading menace" of drug consumption in Punjab, and has asked the India Supreme Court to conduct its own probe into the reports of real estate being used to launder illegal drug money.
Tewari talked to the reporters after the inauguration of a free orthopedic check-up camp last Sept. 6. According to Z News, the former union minister said that drug trade in Punjab was "quite huge" and the money was reportedly being invested in the real estate which needs to be probed.
Tewari also said that drug peddlers' route of investments, such as real estate, is in need to be blocked by the government. He also commented that if the connection between the narcotics suppliers and real estate investors will continue to blossom and not stop, then illegal drug trade and narcotics consumption will still rise and flourish in Punjab.
According to the journal entitled, "Substance use and addiction research in India" published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, the National Household Survey of Drug Use in the country is the first systematic effort to document the nation-wide prevalence of drug use. Alcohol (21.4%) was the primary substance used (apart from tobacco), followed by cannabis (3.0%), and opioids (0.7%). Seventeen to 26% of alcohol users qualified for ICD 10 diagnosis of dependence, translating to an average prevalence of about 4%. There was a marked variation in alcohol use prevalence in different states of India (current use ranged from a low of seven percent in the western state of Gujarat (officially under Prohibition) to 75% in the North-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. Tobacco use prevalence was high at 55.8% among males, with maximum use in the age group 41-50 years.
The real estate industry has been known as a place where criminals can invest their money to make it clean.
