NEARLY three decades away we visited the inner Malwa of Punjab to find out the level of drug addiction in Punjab. Village after village we went, we heard shocking tales of how the youth was getting hooked to opium, bhuki, all kind of narcotics and worse even those pharmaceutical combinations meant to treat diseases were being consumed to get kicks. Even old people who were hooked to opium earlier were now more into other addictions. Liquor as many said was a lesser addiction. Some even thought harmless.

At Bhatinda’s Red Cross de-addiction centre, some well built youth hailing from rich landowning families looked pale and forlorn. Some were even married and had children. Doctors and relatives were working hard to wean them away from the deadly habits but with limited success. Parents cursed their fate as wives and sisters prayed to the almighty to help their husbands and brothers get of the cursed lives. Those who came from the working class; the farmhands and labourers looked more miserable as not many had relatives and friends to help them get out of the killing habits. In all it was a miserable story of hopelessness.

These were then stray pockets in the Malwa of Punjab. Now it has spread to all corners of Punjab and Chandigarh like plague. In many villages, towns and cities, not a family is spared. Haggard youth, locally called [smackia] greet you at the bus stands, in street corners, close to drug shops and the thekas. At marriages and other social gatherings they form separate groups. Elders as I experienced in my home town are scared and advise you to steer clear of these louts. Many parents and elders have given up their cases and wish them either dead or try to push them to some foreign lands with the hope that work would reform them.

Sometime back a senior a doctor at Chandigarh’s PGI estimated the number of these drug addicts at several lakhs in Punjab. He also revealed shockingly tales of ingenuity like roasting of lizards or even consuming pain killers and tranquillisers of various forms. Narcotic powder and heroin seized in Punjab in the last three years is sufficient as a single doze for over 50 lakh people.

Once hooked, these young men graduate to cough syrups like Phansydril and Corex, Proxyvon, Dormant 10, Diszepham tablets. From this stage they, then, move on to a more lethal menu of opium, charas, ganja, mandrax, smack, heroin, lizards’ tails and many more items like application of shoe polish in hair while sitting in the sun, smelling petrol and spreading Iodex on bread, to get that heady feeling. Peer influence, thrill-seeking and curiosity about drugs were found to be the main factors that make youth take to drugs. With the consumption of intoxicants having become so widespread, most boys treat an introduction to them as some kind of a coming-of-age ceremony.

Punjab government’s Department of Social Security Development of Women and Children conducted a survey during 2005 and found Sixty-seven per cent of the rural households in Punjab have one drug addict. The report prepared after a study in eight districts— Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar, Ferozepore, Ludhiana, Muktsar and Gurdaspur found narcotics were the most common form of addiction. Addicts use a variety of drugs which included raw opium, smack, and heroin, synthetic drugs like morphine, pethidine, codeine and psychotropic substances like diazepam.

Dr Ravinder Singh Sandhu, Professor, Department of Sociology, Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar found more than 73 per cent of drug addicts belong to the age group 16-35 years, thus corroding a very vital component of human resource in the state. There are numerous studies to warn the political and social leaders of the dangerous situation where Punjab has landed. Peer influence, myths related to sexual potency, thrill-seeking, curiosity about drugs, unemployment, punitive attitude of others and lack of support during periods of stress were found to be the major reasons for drug addiction.

Intriguingly the excise policy followed by successive governments is liberal and aims at getting more and more taxes through more and more liquor vends. Currently the revenue is around Rs.1728 crores as opposed to Rs.1656 crores in the year 2007-08. it is major source for a squanderer which the Punjab government is. There were 6902 liquor vends in Punjab. In Chandigarh there are more liquor vends than government primary schools. Now add to this illicit distillation, almost two times and the sixth river of Punjab is full of intoxicants. Well said for the state about the poet professor Puran Singh famously said, Punjab is a blessed by the great gurus. Does it need pondering over?
There is a well knit nexus that makes the supply and sale of drugs so smooth that it puts to shame the government’s lethargic corrupt functioning. Smuggler-police-politician nexus aided by a chain of retail outlets works smoothly in spite of government’s actions. According to a top police officer, political protection to smugglers and political interference in the working of the police acts as a major barrier in acting against drug smugglers. And, check with a politician and he blames squarely the police and drug inspectors. Now during the election times, supply is maintained by many political leaders to keep voters in happy moods. Several thousand new drug addicts would be added this summer of elections.

Chemists along with quacks, drug peddlers and truck drivers have been identified as the main supply source of drugs in Punjab. Many chemists are surviving on these addicts as they provide drugs to them without a prescription. Injectible intoxicants, tablets and syrups are easily available. Even many of the so-called de-addiction centres are actually proving to be addiction centers. These are, in fact, supplying drugs to the inmates. The number of such shops, mostly selling drugs, and de-addiction centers, being run to fleece the patients, has increased at an incredible rate in the state. A misconception about de-addiction is being spread in Punjab with some centers promising de-addiction treatment with laser therapy. Most of the privately run de-addiction centers lack basic facilities and are there just to mint money.

The problem has assumed epidemic proportions in the rural areas where education levels are poor and unemployment rampant. A whole generation is as good as destroyed. Not a single village is without scores of drug addicts. Is this not the time for senior leaders like the present chief minister, Mr. Parkash Singh Badal to at least instruct his party candidates and cadres not to supply drugs to the voters? This would be one good example if it is followed.

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