Bravo! The Home Minister went out on Tuesday on an incognito Harun-al-Rashid-style expedition to get the feel of the drug netherworld. He was not without his Masroor — police top boss Azizul Huq. In a bustee near the Magh Bazar railway level-crossing, they found three youngmen buying phensidyl — three phials at 120 Taka each. The police boss enquired if the seller could supply him 300 phials readily. Yes. was the ready reply.

Keeping intact their cover they went up to . Demra police station to lodge a complaint against the regular trafficking. The response from the station people fell far short of the required.

Afterwards the same night Home Minister Rafiqul Islam described the situation to reporters as terrible. Well. Minister Islam must be knowing that he hasn't seen even the tip of the parco‘lc iceberg. The expedition must steei his resolve to swoop down on drug trafficking. And this has become immensely more urgent in the backdrop Eliadah McCord's amnesty.

If any one knows his Bangladesh, he knows what do the youths, impecunious and opulent alike, do after dusk. A great many of fhem, that is, Minister Islam would find a far more important ■ quarry in the so-called pharmacies of the towns in the interior — starting with, say, Narayanganj. The business, for many of them, is dealing in narcotic drugs. The phensidyl circle could perhaps be broken with comparative ease. But not the more dangerous one — the roaring business in opium and canabis derivatives. It seems that a whole generation has fallen for these and is more than halfway being lost to society.

We congratulate the minister on his expedition but at the same time caution him that this would only whet our thirst for much more better things to come on the law and order front.