RAWALPINDI: ThePrime Minister, Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, has reaffirmed his Government’s resolve to eliminate the evils of growing of and traffic in dangerous narcotics. … In a statement released here today [Sept 17], the Prime Minister said in response to the approaches made to the Government … by friendly countries for co-operation in the elimination of this scourge … the Government has constituted a Narcotics Control Board. …

The Board has been directed to take appropriate action for the registration of drug addicts and institute necessary measures for their rehabilitation. The production of opium will be progressively reduced with a view to its total elimination. … Comprehensive projects for the development of such areas will have to be implemented to provide alternative … sources of livelihood for the grower.

[Meanwhile, as reported from Rawalpindi,] the President of the All-Pakistan Newspaper Society, Mir Khalilur Rahman, President of the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors, Mr Majeed Nizami, and the President of the Federal Union of Journalists, Mr Minhaj Barna, in a joint statement … regretted that the Government had failed to honour its promise to lift the ban on three dailies of Sind.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2023