The Government Information Department has said the 1818 drug tip-off hotline is operating 24 hours a day, in a public notice reported on Wednesday by Hiru News.
The number takes public information on drug trafficking, distribution and related suspicious activity anywhere in the country, and passes it to the security forces. The department says informant confidentiality is fully protected and that reports are acted on promptly.
The service runs under the direct supervision of the Presidential Secretariat and the “Ratama Ekata” National Operations Council.
The hotline is not new
Hiru’s report is headlined as a launch. It is not one.
The 1818 number was introduced by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka on 30 October 2025, alongside the start of the “Ratama Ekata” (“A Nation United”) national anti-drug operation itself, and was publicised again the following day. It has been in service for eleven months.
That is consistent with our own archive: police reported 239,384 arrests over “the past nine months” under the operation on 31 July 2026, which places its start at the end of October 2025.
Read accurately, Wednesday’s item is a restatement of an existing public service — a reminder that the line is staffed round the clock — rather than the opening of a new one. We have not reproduced the “launched” framing.
Context
“Ratama Ekata” is a sustained national crackdown on narcotics and organised crime run through daily raids by police and other security agencies, with rolling arrest figures released publicly. Public tip-offs are one of its declared intelligence sources.
Not reported
Hiru does not say why the notice was issued now, how many calls the line has received, how many have led to arrests, or whether anything about the service has changed. It gives no figures at all. Whether the department was responding to a drop in call volume, a change in staffing, or simply running a routine awareness notice is not stated.
This article is single-sourced on Wednesday’s notice. The two links above date the original launch and are cited inline as archival references, not as current reporting.
