The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on September 13 ordered the Pharmacists not to misuse and sell the pharmaceutical drugs without proper description.

A Division Bench of the State High Court, comprising First Puisne Judge Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice Sanjay Kumar Gupta, after hearing Senior Advocate Sunil Sethi, Advocate Deepika Mahajan for the PIL, after hearing both the sides, directed the Drug Controller, who shall place on record an action plan to ensure the monitoring of the sale and supply of the Pharmaceutical Drugs to various medicine outlets in the state.

The court also directed the Drug Inspector to ensure that the Pharmaceutical Drugs shall not be misused and sold without proper prescription. Any violation in this regard shall be viewed seriously by the Court, it added. The judgement came on a Public Interest Litigation filed by Atharv Mahajan, a student of law, seeking initiation of a special drive by J&K Police in the entire state for checking the growing menace of drugs among the youth and regarding low conviction in the NDPS case.

Senior counsel for the petitioner submitted that the respondents are not taking any effective steps to prevent the menace of Pharmaceutical Drugs and the Drug Controller are under obligation to ensure that the Pharmaceutical Drugs, which are capable of being used as narcotic drugs, are not supplied to the Medical Stores and in this regard, some mechanisms are to be devised. It further submitted that the Narcotics Control Bureau should also suggest some measures to the Drug Controller to prevent misuse of the Drugs as Narcotics and Psychotropic substances.