Tamil Nadu’s drug enforcement, through a lens of statistical triumph, claims low consumption alongside high seizures and presents the state as a “victim” of trafficking rather than a consumer.
Published Sep 22, 2025 | 11:00 AM ⚊ Updated Sep 22, 2025 | 12:02 PM
Representational image. Credit: iStock
Synopsis: Tamil Nadu’s former police chief, Shankar Jiwal, prior to his retirement, highlighted record drug seizures and conviction rates in his end-of-tenure review, presenting the state as both a transit point for trafficking and an enforcement success story. However, experts note that high drug seizure rates may instead reflect the spatial dynamics of trafficking rather than a rise in trafficking activity. Another concern is the emphasis on the monetary value of drugs. Inflated figures can serve as recruitment advertising for criminal groups.
Effective drug enforcement plays a critical role in protecting public health, community safety and social stability, especially in regions that face growing challenges from narcotic and psychotropic substance abuse.
Accurate and transparent reporting of enforcement outcomes is important for building trust with the public and for making informed policy decisions.
Careful presentation and scrutiny of drug enforcement statistics ensures that success is genuinely measured, helps prevent misleading interpretations and supports rigorous assessment of trends in drug trade and consumption.
Shankar Jiwal, IPS, in the final phase of his tenure as Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police and Head of Police Force, presented an extensive statistical overview of the state’s anti-narcotics strategy, highlighting quantitative accomplishments in drug seizures and enforcement actions.
While his emphasis on such achievements reflects genuine police effort, several aspects of this enforcement philosophy warrant careful scrutiny from both criminological and public policy perspectives.
Tamil Nadu’s drug enforcement, through a lens of statistical triumph, claims low consumption alongside high seizures and presents the state as a “victim” of trafficking rather than a consumer.
However, from a criminal justice research perspective, this narrative raises important questions about measurement choices, selective data presentation and political framing, all of which affect its statistical validity and the overall interpretation of enforcement performance.
High drug seizure rates are often interpreted as indicators of enforcement success. However, they may instead reflect spatial dynamics of trafficking, displacement effects from interdiction efforts and agency-specific enforcement priorities rather than a substantive rise in trafficking activity.
Drug policy experts note that seizures primarily indicate where law enforcement concentrates resources, not where drugs actually flow. Tamil Nadu’s position along major trafficking routes creates natural chokepoints where seizures cluster regardless of police effectiveness.
The “balloon effect” documented in trafficking research shows that interdiction often produces geographic and temporal displacement of routes rather than reducing supply. High seizures in Tamil Nadu may actually indicate unsuccessful interdiction elsewhere within the state, enabling traffickers to continue their illicit enterprise.
This transforms seizure statistics from success indicators into evidence of existing systemic enforcement challenges across the trafficking chain. What appears particularly concerning is the apparent lack of anticipation of such displacements.
Although traditional narcotics like ganja and heroin remain problematic, the state is now contending with a rising challenge posed by the misuse of pharmaceutical drugs.
The dramatic increase in pharmaceutical seizures, from 39,910 tablets in 2023 to 1.42 lakh tablets in 2024, indicates that enforcement agencies have been responding to emerging trafficking trends rather than anticipating them and proactively disrupting the supply chain.
Effective enforcement strategies should account for displacement and include pre-emptive measures. However, the data suggest that Tamil Nadu was caught unprepared by predictable shifts in trafficking methods, including the transition from cannabis to pharmaceutical drugs.
Another concern is the emphasis on the monetary value of drugs, such as claiming the destruction of cannabis crops “worth ₹4,000 crore.” Law enforcement experts consistently advise against publicising drug valuations, recommending instead that the value of seized property be tracked and recorded for internal purposes only.
Inflated figures can act as recruitment advertising for criminal groups and provide misleading indicators of enforcement success. Such practices suggest a preference for headlines over genuine harm reduction.
Jiwal boasts of an 88 percent conviction rate as of June 2025, yet provides no breakdown of whether these convictions involve individuals possessing drugs for personal use, street-level dealers and couriers, or the kingpins orchestrating the trade.
In fact, in 2020 and 2021, the Tamil Nadu police made more arrests under the NDPS Act for possession of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances for personal consumption rather than for trafficking. Without this critical context, high conviction rates may simply indicate the prosecution of drug users and easily replaceable couriers, while the kingpins behind the trade remain untouched.
High conviction rates in drug cases often reflect prosecutorial pressure tactics, including charge stacking and the use of preventive detention. Tamil Nadu’s application of the Goondas Act adds another layer of coercion, allowing authorities to detain individuals without trial while building cases. This transforms conviction statistics from indicators of justice into potential evidence of systemic due process concerns.
A critical paradox emerges when enforcement appears effective; if trafficking leadership were truly being targeted, drug flow would shrink, leading to fewer seizures over time. Instead, Tamil Nadu’s consistently high and rising seizure rates suggest that trafficking networks remain robust and adaptive.
This creates a perverse incentive for authorities to focus on arresting low-level couriers to sustain impressive statistics while avoiding the more complex investigations required to dismantle kingpins. The result is a system that celebrates arresting symptoms while the underlying problem continues unchecked.
Perhaps most troubling is his implicit suggestion that effective drug enforcement began only with the current government. Jiwal’s repeated emphasis on improvements “over the past four years” inadvertently undermines the institutional memory and continuous efforts of the Tamil Nadu Police Force that span decades of patient work across multiple governments.
Professional policing institutions depend on accumulated expertise, established intelligence networks and evolved operational strategies that transcend political tenures.
Intelligence networks, in particular, cannot be developed instantly; they require years of careful cultivation, relationship building and trust development.
When senior police officials frame enforcement success exclusively within current political contexts, they diminish the contributions of decades of institutional development and risk politicising professional law enforcement.
This approach creates unrealistic expectations about enforcement capabilities and may unexpectedly result in reduced public disclosure of actual drug-related seizures when political narratives demand ever-increasing “success” metrics.
If high seizures become politically necessary for demonstrating effectiveness, agencies face pressure to maintain or inflate statistics even when actual enforcement success might reduce trafficking and thus seizures.
This creates a troubling dynamic where political messaging corrupts statistical integrity, making genuine policy evaluation impossible.
Drug trafficking networks operate across political cycles and require sustained, long-term strategies that build upon institutional knowledge rather than starting afresh with each administration.
Reducing cumulative institutional achievements to four years of political leadership diminishes the service of every officer who served before and damages the morale of those who will serve after.
The statistical narrative presented by Tamil Nadu’s erstwhile police leadership, when examined through rigorous analysis, highlights important limitations in both measurement and interpretation.
Seizure metrics can sometimes signal enforcement gaps rather than successes, and high conviction rates may reflect action against drug users and low-level couriers rather than the kingpins driving the trade. Together, these factors create a statistical mirage that obscures, rather than clarifies, the true nature of Tamil Nadu’s drug-related challenges.
Effective law enforcement requires transparent data disclosure and public scrutiny to support evidence-based assessments. However, Tamil Nadu’s crime data for 2023 and 2024 remains unpublished, and the drug enforcement statistics presented by Shankar Jiwal are limited to internal police sources, restricting independent evaluation.
Even with the digitisation of crime registration through the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), the timely release of crime statistics continues to lag.
Only through timely, transparent data and a willingness to acknowledge underlying realities can Tamil Nadu develop evidence-based strategies that strengthen public safety and address crime at its roots.
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
