India’s Home Minister, Amit Shah, at R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture proposed a common legal and enforcement framework to dismantle global narcotics syndicates.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday called for a coordinated international campaign against narcotics trafficking, warning that fragmented national responses would allow drug cartels and narco-terror networks to continue exploiting legal and policy gaps across borders.
Addressing the annual R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture organised by Research and Analysis Wing, Shah said India had adopted a “zero tolerance” policy towards narcotics and was working towards the national objective of achieving a drug-free India by 2047 under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The lecture series, instituted in 2007 in memory of R&AW founder Rameshwar Nath Kao, was attended by diplomats from over 40 countries, former intelligence chiefs and senior members of India’s security establishment. This is the only publicly acknowledged event that is organised by India’s external intelligence agency.
Speaking on the theme “Narcotics: A Borderless Threat, A Collective Responsibility”, Shah said drug trafficking could no longer be treated merely as a law-and-order issue, arguing that it had evolved into a wider national security and public health challenge with long-term consequences for societies and future generations.
He said drug money was increasingly being used to finance terrorism, organised crime and parallel economic systems, while the social and medical consequences of drug abuse often remained underestimated. Shah warned that unless countries acted collectively now, the global damage caused by narcotics networks could become irreversible within a decade.
Calling for greater international coordination, Shah proposed a common legal and enforcement framework among nations, including alignment on the definition of controlled substances, standardised punishments for trafficking offences, intelligence-sharing mechanisms and cooperation on extradition of major drug traffickers.
He said Indian agencies had, with the support of friendly countries, succeeded in bringing back more than 40 transnational criminals to India over the past two years, but added that significantly greater cooperation was required to dismantle global narcotics syndicates.
The Home Minister also argued that the fight against drugs should rise above geopolitical rivalries and national interests, saying the world must simultaneously confront both narco-networks and what he termed “narco-terror states”.
Shah urged diplomats and ambassadors present at the event to support India’s anti-narcotics efforts, stating that the scale of the challenge, involving nearly 195 countries and more than 250,000 kilometres of international borders worldwide, could not be addressed through isolated approaches.
