SC made anti-drug law more stringent

The Supreme Court has provided more teeth to the anti-narcotics law and held that it is the quantity of the entire banned drug mixture and not its purity which will determine the punishment for an offender under the legislation.

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Key-Points

SC considered the fact that illicit drugs are often sold in a pure form. These drugs are adulterated with other substances like chalk powder, zinc oxides, and other cheaper but more dangerous impurities.

Therefore, the three-judge bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Indira Banerjee and M R Shah ruled that per the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, the punishment for possessing a commercial quantity of drugs will be more compared to the small quantity.

In 2008, the SC had ruled that since adulterated drugs contained several neutral substances which are not psychotropic in nature, it would be wrong to punish a person based on the weight of the seized drug.

Hence, it had ruled that the punishment for possessing drugs, whether small or commercial quantity, would be based on determining the weight of a pure banned substance and not by the entire weight of the seized drugs.