DEHRADUN: Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Saturday said that actor Sanjay Dutt will be the brand ambassador for anti-drug campaign for five states, including Uttarakhand, and two Union Territories.Rawat said that he had a telephonic conversation with the Bollywood actor and he has given his consent for the campaign. “Dutt said that he had himself suffered due to the drug addiction during the initial stage of his acting career. He was more than happy to offer his support to the anti-drug campaign. The actor claimed that he was willing to make his contribution by being a part of the campaign and become its ambassador,” the chief minister added.Recently, Rawat was in Mumbai where he met a number of Bollywood directors, including Mukesh Bhatt and Vishal Bharadwaj. Though he could not meet the ‘Vaastav’ star “as he was shooting for a movie somewhere,” the CM had a telephonic conversation with him.The move is significant as five states, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, and union territory of Chandigarh and Delhi had recently met and chalked out a joint strategy to fight drug menace, which has made an adverse impact especially in the states of North India. Rawat was also in Chandigarh recently to attend a regional conference — which also had the presence of his counterparts from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi.As a part of the strategy, these states intend to launch a large scale awareness campaign about the ill-effects of drugs and how to keep children away from it.In the August 20 meeting, attended by four CMs Trivendra Singh Rawat, Amarinder Singh Manohar Lal Khattar and Jairam Thakur, and representatives of Rajasthan and Delhi, it was decided to have a centralized secretariat at Panchkula, where nodal officers of each state would be posted for sharing information and planning strategy. The CMs has also decided to meet every six month to review the progress of the campaign.