Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar has vowed to root out drug trade in education institutions, saying that contraband items would destroy the country’s youth and future generations.

“Drug dealers are looking for the destruction of our young generation and the future of Pakistan,” he said in a post on X on Monday.

Kakar said this during a meeting with the administration of the Ministry of Interior in Islamabad and the inspector general of police.

He added that interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti would personally supervise the counter-action in educational institutions.

In response to the post, Bugti said that the police and the chief commissioner of Islamabad together would “effectively monitor” all the small and big educational institutions in the federal capital will be effectively monitored and the “scourge of addiction will be eradicated from the city”.

According to the data provided by the Anti-Narcotics Force, there are 7.6 million drug abusers in Pakistan. There were 4.5 million in 2013 when the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime held its first survey. It is said that nearly half the drug abusers in Pakistan are under 30.