Poll after poll, drug abuse remains an unresolved issue in Punjab

Bimla Devi has been waiting outside the Drug De-addiction Centre at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) since morning and it is way past lunch time. 

Her son, slightly over 20, took to substance abuse a few months ago. He is in the corner of the waiting area, sheepishly avoiding the gaze of a stranger as his mother narrates her hardship.

“Chitta lenda aye,” (he takes heroine) says Devi, who noticed a decline in her son’s health a couple of months ago and confronted him on that.

“He accepted taking drugs but was ready to quit and he himself agreed for treatment,” said 40-year-old Devi, who is from Jind in Haryana but settled in the city after marriage.

She is not the only one. There are many in queue waiting to be treated.

Even though drug abuse is primarily in men of all age groups, a majority of the patients are 20-25 and the number of women addicts has seen a huge jump in the past 10-15 years.

A regular working-day for a psychiatric social worker here means counselling the patients and their relatives.

The centre at the PGI was started in 1987-88 but the number of patients has seen a substantial jump in the last decade.

However, these workers view it differently. “More patients mean more awareness. It means that they want to be treated,” said a psychiatric social worker.

The counselling session is not restricted to the hospital but these social workers keep records of their patients, and their addresses and phone numbers, and routinely enquire about them from their family members.

One such call was in progress. The welfare worker phoned a patient and asked his father about his son’s health and further plans for continuing the treatment.

To begin with, each patient is asked a set of questions about childhood, friends, family, what made them take drugs, etc.

“The number of patients has increased 10 times since the early 2000s,” an official said. The centre at the PGI has been functioning since 1987-88, but the spurt in the number of cases began since the early 2000s.

“That was because the pattern of drugs has changed from smack or brown sugar to substances that can be injected. Chitta is of that variety. With these drugs the chances of contracting HIV or Hepatitis C are high,” said Dr Debasish Basu, professor at the Department of Psychiatry, PGIMER.

Mainstreaming drugs that can be injected became a menace in Punjab and continues to be so. Some pharmaceutical companies illegally manufacture them.

“These drugs are a problem the world over. We have opened 164 drug- and alcohol-rehabilitation centres in the state and, given the magnitude of the problem, we have been able to treat 300,000 opioid-dependent users in the past few years,” Dr Basu said.

Opioids are prescribed to treat pain and their dependence causes withdrawal symptoms.

Drug abuse was a big issue in the 2014 parliamentary elections in Punjab and had dented the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-BJP alliance’s performance. During the assembly elections in 2017, the Congress said it would break the supply line of drugs within a month of coming to power.

The locals say drug abuse has spread to Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

However, officials are of the view that the state governments, be it that the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) or the Congress, have made some progress in the fight against drugs but it is still a mammoth task.

A mammoth task

• Drug abuse was a big issue in the 2014 parliamentary elections in Punjab and had dented the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-BJP alliance’s performance
• During the assembly elections in 2017, the Congress said it would break the supply line of drugs within a month of coming to power
• Officials are of the view that the state governments have made some progress in the fight against drugs but it is still a mammoth task