The failure to recognize and discuss the drug addiction problem in Kashmir at more than face value means the situation is more serious than it seems

By Asif Iqbal Shayeq

The world today is suffering from numerous challenges like poverty, corruption, underdevelopment, unemployment, diseases etc. Together, these problems contribute towards a new problem, which is growing at an alarming rate, called drug abuse. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report 2020, around 269 million people used drugs worldwide in 2018, 30 percent more than in 2009. The report also asserted that over 35 million people suffer from drug use disorders.

Any substance that makes you crave it when you start using it is an addictive agent, and a person who succumbs to feeding that craving is a drug abuser. Initially, many people start using drugs to cope with stress or pain but there comes a stage when a person feels that his/her stress or pain won’t go away without consuming drugs. Here we come to the problem of drug addiction.

Starkly put, the drug addiction problem in Kashmir is not being kept under control, either by the government or the society. Since drug addiction is difficult to detect due to insufficient awareness and inadequate diagnostic protocols, the Kashmir based experts — who have several years of experience in working in the Drug De-addiction & Rehabilitation Centres — believe that the situation is more serious than it seems. Above all, to date, no attempt has been made to reorganize and discuss the grave problem in a collective way and at more than face value.

This paper purports to study the growing drug addiction problem in Kashmir, its various causes and attempts to provide various recommendations; useful to curb the menace.