Introduction
Drug trafficking is a mass level business operations in the contemporary world, irrespective of developed and developing countries. Drug usage has become a major threat to the global economy, in terms of medical and welfare costs. In addition, this is a major factor in determining the ratio of birth and death. According to Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, (2017); F alcohol and drug usage are important risk factors for early death. Approximately, 11.4 million people die prematurely, because of this habit annually. Further, over 350,000 people in the world die per annum, consuming overdoses of alcohol and illicit drugs. Similarly, in Sri Lanka; the annual death record due to the usage of multiple drug varieties is a remarkable amount, such as tobacco-15,521, alcohol-6,150, and illicit drug consumptions-748.
The use of Psychoactive substances (or Drugs) is a known phenomenon in Sri Lanka, since ancient times, which was traditionally used for medicinal purposes in the ‘Ayurvedic’ system of medicine until recent times. With the gradual development of domestic tourism, it was used for recreational purposes, especially cannabis and opium. Thereafter, its usage exceeded the limit, with the arrival of synthetic and potent drugs (heroin) into the country in the early 1980s onwards, among the youth (NDDCB-2018).