• Pawan Gupta
• Ashwani Kumar Dwivedi

Drug abuse is an age old phenomenon traditionally viewed as a form of victimless crime as drug abusers often face stigmatization from the society and the legal structures which in turn impacts their welfare and health.. In India, Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, (NDPS) 1985 criminalizes trafficking, storage and consumption of drugs making the drug abuser a victim to the drug and an offender against law. Like in case of any other offense, police are the first point of contact. After being booked under the NDPS Act, the victims (offenders) are produced in court and are released on bail or with minimum imprisonment. The increase in prison population of drug abusers, the recidivism rates of people being booked under NDPS cases and the case load of cases on the police indicates the failure of criminalizing a drug abuser as a solution to the issue of drug addiction. However recent neo-liberal criminologists are attempting to shift this view of drug abuse being a form of victimless crime by delving into the manifestations of neglect, death and killing associated with drug addiction to explain immediate, peripheral and secondary harm to not justify the shift. This paper intends to counter this by highlighting the disadvantages of criminalization of drug abusers and stresses on an alternative stand of viewing them as victims of drug abuse. It also intends to focus on rehabilitation of the victims of drug abuse as a way towards “demand reduction” of drugs with the help of the law enforcement agency i.e. the police as also envisioned by the NDPS act. The paper traverses the criminological theories from psychological to rational choice and supports the argument with an ongoing intervention model of the law enforcement agencies with community, victims and offenders.

Drug, Drug Trafficking, Psychotropic Substances, Narcotics, Addiction

"A Critical Study on Law Enforcement and Drug Trafficking in India", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.7, Issue 3, page no.1321-1325, March-2020, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2003195.pdf

"A Critical Study on Law Enforcement and Drug Trafficking in India", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.7, Issue 3, page no. pp1321-1325, March-2020, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2003195.pdf