Customers missing, Delhi’s lone legal opium shop about to shut

The one-room small shop near Naiwalan has been operating since 1954 under the medicines and toiletries preparations wing of the Excise Department.

Despite repeated directives from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), an institution empowered to perform the functions of the State Pollution Control Board for Delhi, petrol pumps across the national capital are running without the Vapour Recovery System (VRS) and releasing toxic cancer-causing pollutants in the process. VRS is a fast-track method for reducing vapour transmissions.

A senior CPCB official told The Sunday Guardian: “Taking action on the demands raised by environment experts, the CPCB had passed an order in 2015, asking all petrol and diesel pump owners spread across the city to install the VRS, but the pump owners did not pay heed to the order.”

“Last year, the CPCB again issued a reminder to all these pump owners and asked them to comply with its order. The CPCB had also set a time frame to install the VRS, which ended on 31 March 2016, but nothing has happened since then,” said the same CPCB official.

However, these pump owners have their own reason for not installing the VRS, primarily that the technology is costly.

“The CPCB is also exploring ways by which it can force these pump owners to comply with its order and install the VRS,” said the official cited earlier.

At a time when people in the city are faced with rising pollution, environmental experts have once again raised demands for the installation of VRS. According to various reports by environmentalists across the country, the vapours of petrol and diesel are carcinogenic, cause pollution and several diseases apart from cancer and asthma.

Initially, the demand for the installation of VRS was raised after a study conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) suggested that fuel vapours are a major source of toxic benzene emissions that make them some of the most lethal contributors to Delhi’s air pollution problem.

Jyotsna Rajan, a researcher associated with the CSE, told The Sunday Guardian: “Fuel vapours are hazardous for people who live within a 1/2-km radius of petrol pumps and they might face several serious health issues.”

“The distinct smell emanating from a petrol station is caused by volatile organic compounds that have emerged as pollutants of the utmost concern in our study. Whenever a vehicle or an underground tank is being filled with fuel, these compounds mix in the atmosphere and cause several serious diseases like cancer and asthma,” Rajan said.

Sujata Sanyal, an environmentalist and a professor of geology at Delhi Universitysaid: “There are around 400 petrol and diesel pumps in the city and the air quality around these fuel stations has been found to be poor. The vapours are also putting to risk the healths of over 6,000 workers involved in operating these fuel pumps, as they are the first to be exposed to these cancer-causing compounds on a daily basis.”

“Like in Western countries, the toxic vapours being emitted from these fuel pumps can be reduced by installing VRS, but the pump owners across the country are reluctant to do so. In fact, fuel supplier firms like Indian Oil and Bharat Petroleum should take the initiative to install the VRS,” Sanyal said.

Besides the CPCB, the Department of Industrial Safety is also responsible for workers’ health at fuel stations and can direct the petrol pumps to limit toxic emissions. Delhi’s lone governmentrun opium shop is likely to be closed from March next year as the shop is left with only nine authorised octogenarian buyers and the Central Excise Department is finding it unviable to continue with the shop.

The one-room small shop (sarkari afeem ki dukan) located on Central Delhi’s Desh Bandhu Gupta Road, adjacent to Naiwalan, has been operational since 1954 under the medicines and toiletries preparations wing of the Excise Department. Earlier located in the Walled City, the opium shop shifted to its current location in 2011.

Buyers of opium were regularly given licences during the British rule. But after Independence, the government would not give licences to new buyers. So when the shop came to existence in 1954, licences to buy opium were issued to around 250 people, while the last few were issued in 1975. The Central government has been providing permits to the existing buyers for over six decades, but the number of buyers has come down to nine as most of the authorised buyers died.

Rajendra Yadav, an Excise Department constable who is authorised to run the shop, told The Sunday Guardian: “Many people raise questions about the logic of the government running a shop and selling narcotic substances to these individuals. Even after working for several years with the department, I was not aware of any such shop. Even today, I have no knowledge about the procedure under which the sale of opium to these consumers is allowed.”

“I just visit the shop once a week to sell opium to these licence holders. Now only nine such customers are left and only a few of them pay regular visits. As per rule, I give opium only to individuals owning permit and even their close relatives are not allowed to receive the substance on their behalf,” Yadav said.

“The shop opens only for a few hours every Tuesday and periodically, these licence holders come to the shop to purchase their opium quota, which is up to 20 gram. The dose of opium is based on the individual medical prescription, not exceeding more than 50 gram a month,” Yadav said.

Opium is sold in the shop at Rs 20 a gram to permit holders. The dark brown, semi- solid paste is consumed either with water, or smoked through cigarettes. Earlier, the price was Rs 4 a gram, but recently, the excise department hiked its price to Rs 20 a gram.

Hemchand, a permit holder in his 80s, said: “I have been visiting the opium shop for over 40 years, but now it is getting hard for me to travel to Naiwalan from Shahdara. For the past few years, I usually visit the shop once a month. Also, my grandchildren are against my opium addiction at this age.”

A senior Excise official told The Sunday Guardian: “In the absence of any deaddiction method, it was perceived that these individuals would die without consuming opium; thus, the government continued the sale of opium to several old customers and now only a few are allowed; therefore, the department has decided to close the shop.”

India is one of the few countries that legally grows opium poppy and the only country which legally produces opium gum. Opium poppy ( Papaver somniferum) plant is the source of opium gum, which contains several indispensable alkaloids such as morphine and codeine. Morphine is the best analgesic in the world. In case of extreme and excruciating pain such as that in terminally ill cancer patients, nothing alleviates suffering except morphine. Codeine is commonly used in manufacturing cough syrups.

The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 empowers the Central government to permit and regulate cultivation of opium poppy for medical and scientific purposes. Government of India notifies the tracts where opium cultivation can be licenced, as well as the general conditions for issuance of licence every year.

According to senior Excise official, opium is legally cultivated in eastern Uttar Pradesh and licence holding farmers further send their produce to the government- run Opium and Alkaloids Factory located in Ghazipur. The Delhi University Law Faculty has changed the provision of second supplementary examinations, making it such that students in their fifth and sixth semesters, who might have failed in any of the papers in the previous semesters, will not be able to write failed papers again after the culmination of the final exams of the sixth semester.

Supplementary examinations have been a long-standing demand of law faculty students. But with the new regulations, students will have to invest an extra year if they want to clear their backlog papers. Students will then have to sit as private students along with regular students to write their examinations in the months of November and May.

Mohit Kumar Gupta, a former law student at Delhi University, explained, “Students who have backlog papers in odd semesters (first and third semesters) can write these papers again, along with the main papers of fifth semester, while the backlog papers of even semesters (second and fourth semesters) can be written again along with the main papers of the sixth semester. But beyond that, they can’t do so unless they are willing to waste a year to get into the legal profession. ”

However, not all students are able to clear the papers even in the second attempt. Mohit added, “Students are at peril of scoring less than private universities and losing the precious chance of becoming law officers with public sector undertakings, despite becoming judges and public prosecutors. The secrets of evaluation are much guarded administratively.”

Mithilesh Jaiswal, now in his final year, had gone on a hunger strike last year to make supplementary exams beneficial for students. Jaiswal said: “Even last year, we had demanded that supplementary exams should be allowed even during the first and second semesters of LLB. The faculty has cited reasons for inaction on our requests, saying that more supplementary exams will over burden them.”