Beating around the bush has been every government’s hobby in Nepal. As if the recent crackdown on bootleggers didn’t hold much of a promise, it seems to have discovered a newfound interest in busting drug dealers. Only that these drug dealers do not belong to the breed of drug lords or the drug mafias who deal in lethal drugs and turn our youngsters into useless bunch of junkies.

These nickel-and-dime vendors deal in ayurvedic medicines, which people apparently turn to when all available treatments and curative measures let them down. Nothing wrong in that. But according to the Department of Drug Administration (DDA), traces of allopathic medicines and other harmful chemicals were found mixed with medicines sold in the streets of the capital.

If that’s true, the likely side-effects on the one who consumes such medicines may be horrifying. Not that all allopathic medicines found in the pharmaceutical stores have been hazard-free either. Some unscrupulous pharmacists even sell drugs long past their expiry dates, some of them as efficient as other sure-fire ways of committing suicide. Then there are traders who smuggle rare Himalayan herbs across the borders. Sadly though, it’s always the small-time offenders, who get caught up in the net, while the big ones manoeuvre their way out. The government better come down heavily on both types of wrongdoers.