STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Even as the high voltage fitness campaign is gaining momentum with youth getting largely drawn towards health clubs and gyms, the requirement for energy supplements and tonics has increased manifold in the City of Temples. The demand is growing in the wake of sustained media awareness and prescriptions of experts and gym instructors.
Being a positive sign in the backdrop of declining sales of cigarette and other tobacco products, again due to media exposure, the markets are flooded with nutrients and energy supplements.
The sale of these revitalisers and supplements has witnessed ten-fold increase, as per survey conducted by STATE TIMES.
However, these energy products are being sold openly in Jammu and Kashmir, without any supervision or check of the Heath Department and the designated Drugs Control Organisation (DCO), as a result of which over ninety per cent supplements are allegedly being sold in the State are sub standard or spurious.
Recently, a haul of spurious health energy products was seized in Delhi, valuing over Rs 60 lakh but unfortunately the Drugs Controller Department in Jammu took no action in this regard as the city is perhaps biggest importer of these supplements. The lackadaisical approach of the department is attributed connivance at various levels and lack of command as the DCO is headed by a junior officer of the rank of Assistant Controller.
The Assistant Controller, holding the charge of Controller is facing numerous complaints and cases. She is involved in a Crime Branch case wherein huge quantities of spurious drugs were seized from various hospitals of the State. She was member of a Departmental Purchase Committee, records of which were seized by the Crime Branch. During the course of investigation, a huge quantity of spurious antibiotic drug, Maximizin-625 was recovered from unscrupulous pharma traders.
The availability of spurious and unhygienic supplements has created panic among parents, who told STATE TIMES that despite complaints the Drug Control Organisation failed in taking samples, conducting market checks for initiating action against the unscrupulous traders.
“We are forced to draw media attention towards this menace, which is continuing due to active connivance at various levels between the DCO and the traders”, some of the parents said, adding that they were contemplating to move a Public Interest Litigation in a court of law in this regard.
