TRADE IN NARCOTIC DRUGS

1. The Chief Controller of Factories, New Delhi shall ensure adequate and uninterrupted supply of morphine, codeine, thebaine and their salts to the users in India, in particular of codeine phosphate which is consumed in quantities far in excess of its domestic production. The likely demand and estimated production within the country should be assessed well in advance of the commencement of the year and steps taken to ensure that the demand supply gap is adequately met though import.

2. Sale, transport, use and consumption of narcotic drugs is regulated by the State Governments under the State NDPS Rules framed under the NDPS Act. Excessive regulations and cumbersome procedures in many States have discouraged the doctors from prescribing narcotic drugs such as morphine and chemists from stocking them. Morphine, a derivative of opium, is known to be the best analgesic and which alone will relieve extremely excruciating pain such as the pain of a terminally ill cancer patient or of a victim of gunshot. As a result of the procedures, medical use of morphine has been extremely low with the result that tens of thousands of patients in India suffer from avoidable pain. 

India, which has one-sixth of the humanity, uses only one-thousandth of the morphine consumed in the world. The State Governments will take effective steps to simplify the procedures for use of morphine and other opioids and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will sensitise doctors and pharmacies to the need to prescribe and stock respectively such preparations. A course on palliative care shall be considered for inclusion in the curriculum of undergraduate medical students. State Governments shall establish and / or recognize palliative care centres where patients will be provided palliative care. In each District there should be at least two such palliative care centres. 

State Government shall establish procedure to ensure hassle free supply of morphine & other opioids in adequate quantity to these centres. Guidelines of WHO in this regard will be studied and adopted to extent possible, to maintain the balance between the need to make available opioids for palliative care and pain relief and preventing their diversion for abuse.