The latest Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) report, identifying Nagaland among India's frontline states in an evolving narcotics trade, should dispel any lingering notion that the State is merely a transit point. Three years after the Nagaland Government declared a "War on Drugs" in 2023, it is time to ask whether the campaign has altered the trajectory of the crisis. The answer is mixed, at best.
There is little doubt that enforcement has intensified. Seizures have increased, interstate coordination has improved, and awareness campaigns have expanded. Yet the evidence suggests that while enforcement has become more visible, the underlying problem remains deeply entrenched.
There are inconsistencies across official datasets, particularly in seizure figures reported by different agencies, making precise year-on-year comparisons difficult. Across official reports, law enforcement assessments and health studies, one fact is beyond dispute: Nagaland continues to witness significant narcotics seizures alongside widespread substance abuse.
The most authoritative baseline remains the 2019 Magnitude of Substance Use in India, commissioned by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and conducted by AIIMS. The findings were sobering. An estimated 25.22% of Nagaland's population aged 10-75 years were current opioid users-opium, heroin and pharmaceutical opioids, more than twelve times the national average of 2.06% and the second-highest prevalence after Mizoram. Nagaland also recorded the country's second-highest prevalence of sedative use at 9.67%, while an estimated 33,888 people injected drugs, placing the State among the ten worst affected nationally.
More recently, State’s Director General of Police Rupin Sharma suggested that actual substance use could range between 10% and 13% of the population because many users remain hidden from surveys. Separately, officials at public events have cited estimates of around 6.24 lakh substance users in Nagaland, based on the 2019 survey. Whether these figures are ultimately validated or not, they point to broad official concern that the crisis is significantly larger than existing estimates indicate.
The challenge extends to the police force itself. The War on Drugs was launched with a pledge to first rid the force of substance abuse. Yet, recent estimates by Mokokchung SSP Vesupra Kezo suggest that nearly one in four police personnel could still be battling alcohol or drug addiction. If the agency spearheading enforcement continues to grapple with the same problem, it is a reminder that the crisis cannot be solved through policing alone.
The NCB report also deserves closer reading. While it does not explicitly identify trafficking routes, seizure patterns across the North-East suggest that the principal corridor increasingly runs through Manipur, with large recoveries in Assam highlighting the onward movement of narcotics into the rest of the country. Situated between the two, Nagaland's growing prominence appears to stem less from its own border with Myanmar than from its location along this expanding regional supply chain.
Campaign against drugs cannot be measured simply by arrests or seizure statistics. Enforcement is indispensable, but every consignment intercepted points to many others that evade detection, while arrests alone do little to reduce the demand sustaining the trade. The AIIMS study itself advocates expanding treatment, strengthening evidence-based prevention, improving coordination between enforcement and public health agencies, and generating better data to guide policy. The advice must be taken seriously.
The 2023 declaration acknowledged that Nagaland faced an extraordinary threat. Subsequent reports thereafter indicate that challenge has only become more complex, interconnected and far-reaching. The State Police Chief recently informed that the North-East states are finalising a joint strategy against drug trafficking, while Nagaland's observance of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking reinforced that prevention, treatment, recovery and reintegration must complement enforcement.
These are positive steps. The next phase must translate these commitments as well as other slogans into action, guided as much by evidence as enforcement, through better data, stronger inter-state cooperation, intelligence-led policing, expanded treatment and rehabilitation, and sustained community participation.
For any feedback, drop a line to jamir.moa@gmail.com
