Guwahati, June 23: Tablets containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are being trafficked from India to Myanmar through the Northeast for preparation of party drugs, particularly amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS).

The zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau, Sanjay Kumar, today said ephedrine and pseudoephedrine tablets were smuggled to Myanmar, where these were used to prepare ATS such as ecstasy and speed in clandestine factories.

“From Myanmar, these are then smuggled back to India and other countries,” he said.

Party drugs — also known as synthetic drugs — such as ATS, which are taken as pills, smoked, inhaled or injected, are particularly attractive to young people because they produce a sense of high energy and release of social inhibitions.“Tablets containing ephedrine and pseudoeph-edrine are illegally transported from places like Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh to Manipur and then smuggled to Myanmar,” Kumar said.

Ephedrine is a chemical used to prepare medicines for treatment of asthma while pseudoephedrine is used to treat nasal and sinus congestion.

In India, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are controlled substances and individuals cannot possess these chemicals without permission from competent authorities.

Prolonged use of ATS is dangerous because it depletes serotonin, a very important chemical in the brain, which affects the mood, sleeping and eating habits, thinking proce-sses and sensitivity to pain.

Kumar said the Guwahati zonal unit of the Narcotics Control Bureau has stepped up vigil in the region to check drug trafficking which resulted in as many as four seizures of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine tablets in Imphal and Guwahati within the past couple of months.

The Guwahati zonal unit has its jurisdiction over Ass-am, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and Nagaland.

The zonal director said the Northeast is a corridor for illegal trafficking of narcotic drugs from the “Golden Triangle” (comprising Myanmar, Thailand and Laos).

He also expressed concern over smuggling of Phensedyl cough syrup to Bangladesh.

“Phensedyl is manufactured in West Bengal and transported using trucks and other vehicles to Tripura via Assam. From Tripura it is smuggled to Bangladesh where it is widely abused,” he said.

On illicit poppy cultivation in the region, Kumar said the bureau had destroyed around 900 acres of illegal poppy cultivation in Changlang, Anjaw, Upper Siang and Tirap districts of Arunachal Pradesh in March this year.

It has also destroyed over 904 acres of illicit poppy cultivation in Churachandpur, Senapati and Ukhrul districts of Manipur this year.