In Sri Lanka, narcotics seizures arrive with choreography.

A press conference.
A table of neatly stacked packets.
A senior officer pointing gravely at contraband. A headline that reassures us the State is awake.

And then — nothing.

The applause fades. The drugs disappear. And the public is left to trust that what was seized did not quietly re-enter the very market it was meant to be removed from.

That silence is no longer benign. It is corrosive.

For an island nation — ringed by sea, checkpoints, uniforms and statutes — Sri Lanka’s narcotics trade remains improbably resilient. Heroin, ICE, cocaine, synthetic pills: the names change, the supply does not. If seizures are rising, availability does not appear to be falling. That mismatch should trouble any serious government.

The uncomfortable question the public keeps asking — often sotto voce — is this: what actually happens to seized drugs after the cameras leave?

The Long Chain Nobody Sees

Drugs are seized by many arms of the State: Customs, the Navy, the Police, the STF, airport units, intelligence-linked task forces. Each seizure is documented. Each case enters a file. Each consignment becomes “court property”.

And then it vanishes into a process the public is almost never allowed to observe.

Where are the consolidated monthly figures? Where is the publicly accessible inventory? Where are the routine destruction certificates? Where are the independent observers?

In a system that prides itself on procedure, the most dangerous substances in the country are handled with remarkably little public visibility.

This is not a legal technicality. It is a governance failure.

The Suspicion That Refuses to Die

There is a reason — an ugly one — why allegations persist that some seized narcotics find their way back into circulation.

It is not because the public is paranoid. It is because opacity invites imagination.

When seizures are publicised but destruction is not, the gap fills itself. When drugs are stored for years as “case property” without clear audit trails, suspicion becomes rational. When different agencies operate parallel seizure systems with no unified reporting, accountability dissolves.

The State’s response is usually indignant denial. That is not enough. In democracies, trust is not demanded. It is earned through verifiable process.

Islands Should Not Bleed This Way
Geography matters. Sri Lanka is not landlocked. It does not share porous borders with half a continent. Every major narcotics consignment must arrive by sea or air — through monitored gateways.

Which makes the persistence of the drug economy even more damning.

Either:
seizures represent only a fraction of actual inflows, or leakages exist after seizure.

Both scenarios are disastrous. Only one is discussed openly.

Applause Is Not Policy
Governments — past and present — have loved the optics of seizures. They photograph well. They sound tough. They create the impression of momentum.

But law enforcement is not theatre. It is supply-chain management of harm.

A seizure without transparent destruction is not a victory. It is an unresolved risk.

The absence of regular, standardised, public reporting is indefensible. There is no national monthly bulletin detailing:
total seizures by substance,

storage locations,
quantities pending court cases, quantities destroyed,
methods of destruction,
dates and witnesses.

This is not an exotic demand. Countries with far greater narcotics exposure publish such data routinely. Some livestream destruction. Some mandate independent civilian oversight.

Sri Lanka offers speeches.

Why the Reluctance?

No administration — whether draped in law-and-order rhetoric or reformist language — has confronted this head-on. The reasons are rarely articulated, but the possibilities are unsettling:

Fear of exposing weak internal controls Resistance from entrenched interests Bureaucratic inertia
Or worse, complicity that prefers darkness

None of these explanations are acceptable. All of them are plausible.

Transparency Is the Deterrent
Destroying drugs quietly does not deter criminals. Proving that destruction happened does.

If traffickers know seized stock will be audited, documented, destroyed publicly and irreversibly, the incentive structure changes. If insiders know there is no shadow space to exploit, temptation diminishes.

Opacity protects only two groups: traffickers and those who benefit from ambiguity.

The Newsline Question
This is not a call for accusations. It is a demand for systems.

Where are the monthly numbers? Where are the destruction logs? Where is the oversight?

Until those answers are routine, the State’s loudest anti- drug messaging will continue to ring hollow.

Sri Lanka does not have a seizure problem. It has a follow-through problem.

Applause is easy. Transparency is harder.

And until the government — any government — chooses the harder path, the question will remain unavoidable:

When drugs are seized in Sri Lanka, do they leave the system — or merely change hands?
That is not cynicism.
It is accountability asking to be let in.