Punjab teeters on edge of crisis as 70% fall into drug addiction

Excerpts :

The threat of drugs, he adds, is worse than two decades of Sikh terrorism that ravaged the province until the early 1990s, during which more than 60,000 people died, as it is far more insidious and cannot be rectified by policing. The ANTF says all of Punjab’s 20 districts, particularly border regions, are infested with drug peddlers selling opium and heroin smuggled from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Money from drug smuggling had, for decades, financed the civil war in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s adjoining tribal regions.

ANTF officials say a large proportion of the 500kg of heroin seized in the state last year was for local consumption, and the rest was destined for western markets. They stress that the seizures represent just a small proportion of the drugs making it through and being sold profitably.

“In rural Punjab, families often try to pass off a drug overdose death either as suicide or an overdose of prescriptive medicines for chronic ailments,” Meena says. The entire state seems to be in denial over its drug addiction and is unwilling to accept its severity, he declares.

Punjab’s grievous drug problem was revealed recently in a report by Guru Nanak University in Punjab’s largest city, Amritsar, which declared that some 73.5 per cent of the state’s youth between 16 and 35 years were confirmed drug addicts.

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With thanks : source : irishtimes

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