For years, Punjab has explained its drug crisis through the Pakistan route. That explanation is correct, but incomplete. The report confirms Punjab’s centrality to heroin trafficking from the Golden Crescent, the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran corridor. Punjab accounted for 2,085.55 kg of heroin seizures in 2025, nearly 58 per cent of India’s total. The report says these seizures assert Punjab’s “central role” in drugs coming from that corridor.
Drone smuggling has sharpened the threat. The report calls drone-based trafficking a “historic high”. Of 305 drone-related drug trafficking cases detected along the India-Pakistan border in 2025, Punjab accounted for 298. Around 461 kg of drugs were seized in Punjab-linked drone cases, including heroin and methamphetamine.
So Pakistan is a problem. Let there be no softness on that. It is not merely sending contraband. It is using narcotics as a weapon against Punjab’s youth, India’s border security and the social stability of a frontline state. Every drone entering Punjab is a hostile act. In several seizures, drugs have also travelled with weapons. The message is darker: deliver the drugs, keep the gun.
But the more uncomfortable warning in the NCB report is not about Pakistan. It is about Punjab’s own medicine supply chain.
The report says India faces a “growing challenge” from the misuse and trafficking of pharmaceutical drugs. For Punjab, the warning is sharper. Pharmaceutical opioids have emerged as a “dangerous second wave”. In 2025, Punjab saw the seizure of 8,95,508 bottles of codeine-based cough syrup, the highest among all states.
The report’s most important sentence must be reproduced verbatim: “The ready availability of cheap, legally manufactured drugs such as Buprenorphine, Tramadol and Alprazolam through non-compliant pharmacies has made diverted pharmaceuticals an accessible substitute.”
This is the line Punjab must not ignore.
Heroin may come from Pakistan. But codeine cough syrup does not need a drone. Tramadol does not need a tunnel. Alprazolam does not need a smuggler crossing the Ravi. These are legal medicines. Their source is weak regulation, loose prescription practices, suspicious distributors, compromised stockists and chemist shops that everyone knows about, but nobody touches.
That is why this second wave may be more dangerous than the first.
A border can be fenced. A drone can be jammed. A heroin packet can be intercepted. But how do you fence a pharmacy network? How do you police a cough syrup bottle that moved through a legal invoice before entering the illegal market? How do you identify the moment when medicine becomes poison?
Codeine, Tramadol, Alprazolam and Buprenorphine are medicines in genuine medical hands. In corrupt supply chains, they become Punjab’s new chitta.
For too long, drugs in Punjab have been reduced to election slogans. Everyone blames Pakistan. Pakistan is guilty, but blaming only Pakistan is dangerous. It allows the internal drug economy to survive.
The NCB report shows that traffickers are adapting. Drones are replacing old ground routes. Encrypted platforms are replacing street-level contact. Pharmaceutical substitutes are replacing expensive heroin wherever supply is tight or addicts are desperate. Punjab’s drug market is no longer only about what crosses the border. It is also about what leaks from the medicine counter.
The Punjab government deserves credit for bringing pressure through Yudh Nashian Virudh. But a general anti-drug drive is not enough. Heroin and diverted pharmaceuticals require different wars.
Against heroin, Punjab needs tighter coordination with BSF, NCB, intelligence agencies and village-level informant networks. Anti-drone technology must be scaled up. Every drone drop must be investigated as a national security chain involving handlers, financiers, receivers and local distributors.
Against pharma opioids, Punjab needs internal cleansing. Every district must prepare a red-flag list of pharmacies, wholesalers and distributors showing abnormal sale of codeine syrup, opioid substitutes, sedatives and painkillers. Suspicious spikes must trigger audit. Chemist shops linked to abuse must lose licences permanently. Stockists supplying them must face prosecution.
Punjab must digitise the movement of habit-forming medicines from manufacturer to distributor to retailer. The data will tell the truth. A small-town chemist cannot have abnormal demand for cough syrup, sedatives or opioid tablets without a reason.
Punjab must distinguish between addict and trafficker. The addict needs treatment, counselling, family support and dignity. The trafficker needs jail. The supplier needs property attachment. The financier needs financial investigation. The corrupt official needs punishment. The political protector needs exposure.
Pakistan may have opened the first front. But Punjab’s second front is domestic. It is hidden in a bottle, a strip, a fake prescription, a careless licence, a corrupt inspection and a pharmacy counter.
If Punjab continues to see only Pakistan, it will miss the shop next door. And if it misses the shop next door, the next drug wave will not arrive from across the border. It will come legally manufactured, locally diverted and quietly sold.