The Inspector General of Police has ordered a special intelligence operation to identify and monitor parties organised through Facebook, along with the venues where they are held, police said on Thursday.

The aim is to stop young people being drawn into drug use at such events, Police Spokesman ASP F. U. Wootler said, according to the Daily Mirror.

The allegation

Wootler said a number of these events are allegedly organised by individuals connected to illicit drug networks, and that some operate as commercial ventures linked to organised crime and profit-making.

He said police will continue gathering intelligence to identify similar gatherings and act against those involved, and urged parents to watch for sudden changes in their children’s conversations, behaviour and daily movements. Young people, he warned, could be targeted by traffickers under the cover of attending a “Facebook party.”

The operation follows a raid within the Teldeniya Police Division, where 41 young men and women were arrested at a party advertised on the platform earlier this month.

The death figures

Wootler put two numbers on the record.

175 people died by suicide as a result of drug-related crises in 2025 — 172 men and three women.

11 deaths linked to drug abuse have been recorded so far in 2026.

The two figures are not directly comparable. The 2025 count is specifically of suicides attributed to drug-related crisis; the 2026 figure is described only as deaths linked to drug abuse, a broader category that would ordinarily include overdose. Read as a like-for-like annual trend they would suggest a very steep fall, and the Daily Mirror does not claim one. On the reporting available the two are measuring different things, and neither is broken down by substance.

Context

Sri Lankan police have run a sustained enforcement drive against methamphetamine — “ice” — for more than a year, and the harm has been surfacing in settings well beyond nightlife, including reported use among university students. The organised-crime framing here is consistent with the government’s wider legislative direction: Cabinet last week approved an Anti-Organized Crime Bill for gazetting, intended as a companion to the replacement of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Not reported

The Daily Mirror does not say when the intelligence operation began, which police divisions or units are running it, or what legal basis exists for monitoring privately organised social events. It does not say whether any of the 41 people arrested at Teldeniya have been charged, or whether the organisers of that party have been identified.

It gives no source for either death statistic, does not say which agency compiled them, and does not state the period covered by the 2026 figure. No drug network or individual is named.

Sources: Daily Mirror.