Narcotics numbers tell two stories at once. The Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) seized more than 4.36 crore yaba and other amphetamine-type tablets in 2025—a 91 percent jump from the year before. The other story, revealed by Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed last week, is even darker: some 82 lakh Bangladeshis, nearly five percent of the population, are addicted to illicit drugs.Bangladesh’s drug problem has a well-understood geography. Yaba and crystal methamphetamine enter mainly through the porous border with Myanmar, where rebel groups have adopted yaba as a narco-currency. Cannabis flows in across the western and northern borders with India. Cox’s Bazar, already one of the world’s most strained humanitarian zones, is a primary trafficking corridor. The DNC’s own report lists two dozen narcotics-prone districts stretching from the Chattogram hills to the northern river plains. Traffickers are inventive: they swallow tablets, conceal them in shoe soles and car tyres, and increasingly conduct their business over encrypted messaging apps and mobile payment platforms.Against this landscape, Bangladesh has responded with a flurry of announcements. The Narcotics Control Act, 2018 is to be amended. DNC officers will receive modern weapons and updated training. A new legal framework to trace money laundering through anonymous SIM cards and mobile financial services is being drawn up. The government, the home minister says, intends to pursue not just street-level dealers but the “masterminds, financiers and godfathers” of the trade. However, these pledges are often delivered only partially.
