Manipal: “The demand for untested psychoactive substances, labelled as designer drugs is on the rise as these are available easily,” said Dr Y Bharat Shetty, MLA Mangalore North, at the inauguration of the one-day seminar on, “Designer Drugs – an escalating public health challenge” at the Interact Lecture Hall here on Tuesday.
Dr. Shetty cautioned that these drugs were entering the underground drugs market with nicknames such as “spice”, “bath salts”, “meow meow” and “ecstasy”.
The drugs are called “designer” because they are based on existing illegal recreation drugs with chemical structures that are modified to varying degrees to evade drug loss. The total number of new psychoactive substances is around 400 presently, with new drugs entering the market every day.
“The seminar organized by the newly established Centre for Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (CNPS) under MAHE, was attended by students, scholars and officers from Police, Customs, CISF, RFSL,” said Dr. G Shreekumar Menon, head CNPS.
Pro chancellor MAHE, Dr H S Ballal, Registrar Dr Narayana Sabhahit and Dr Vinod Nayak, HOD Dept of Forensic Medicine, KMC Manipal spoke on the need for robust law enforcement, as well as prevention and treatment approaches.
At the valedictory, Amith Kumar, Deputy Commandant, CISF, Mangalore Airport was the chief guest. Dr. Poornima Baliga, Pro Vice Chancellor who also spoke on the occasion, stressed on the need for parents and teachers to constantly monitor student behaviour to identify tendencies that can give a hint of any deviant behaviour. She informed the audience that MAHE would shortly start a Certificate Programme in Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselling.
