Drug Danger and Social Behaviour - New Challenges

Drug addiction, compulsive craving for drugs is an oldest phenomena because the societies, in all parts of the world, have been using phychoactive drugs drawn from more than 4000 plants, to cure various ailments, to enjoy pleasurable sensation and to alter mood when used otherwise. Hence these drugs have always been misused to create euphoria and never have posed a serious threat to the society. But developments, in the last quarter of the twentieth century have given new dimensions of an epidemic because through technological progress, an increasing number of alkaloids and their derivatives like heroin (smack), crack and many other deadly drugs have captured the minds of youths.

Bhim Sain did his Post Graduation and Doctorate from the University of Delhi. He has been regularly writing for academic journals and news papers. His understanding of socio medical problems has been deepened by his association with medical experts, researchers, editors, journalists, and writers of international repute. He has also contributed on current affairs to leading news papers.

The Government of India had appointed a committee in the year 1977 to go into the details of drug-abuse in this country. This committee had reported that drug-abuse in India was limited except for alcohol and tobacco. However, the same report had noted some disturbing signs indicating deterioration in drug-abuse scene. Value of this warning can be justified by the recent developments taking place in this area. Addition of heroin to street drugs is one such development which cannot be taken lightly.

Heroin has remained a public health concern of large number of countries for many decades but its encroachment upon Indian territory has been witnessed for the last seven years or so. Experiences from all over the world indicate that heroin has not only arrived in India but it is here to stay because it is almost impossible to eradicate hard drugs like heroin from any area where they have firmly established. De-addiction clinics at various hospitals in the city of Delhi speak volumes of the enormity of the problem and it is said that Delhi has the largest number of drug-abusers in educational institutions. Recently, every week between 50 to 100 youngsters have walked into the de-addiction clinics asking or demanding admission into the hospitals. Undernourished adolescent with pinched cheek and disheveled hair and clothes, sitting in the corner of an out-patient hall of a de-addiction clinic, witnesses the fact that one more drug-abuser has grown tired of drug and wants to get rid of it.

One of my friends Mr. Ashok, a lecturer in Delhi, got his addicted brother jailed for six months on the charge of beating mercilessly his mother, his wife and children. The scooter driver addict of Madangir, a slum of Delhi, has also two children and a separate house to live in. His addiction to smack forced him, first to dispose off his three-wheeler then ornaments of his wife and even the utensils of kitchen to buy smack because he wanted smack and only smack but could not earn for it due to physical and mental crippledness created by smack.

Now he wanted to sell his pawned house but his mother did not allow because they were bound to lose the shelter also. To defeat his nefarius designs, though temporarily his lecturer brother got him sentenced.

To be in jail is never a guarantee to stop smoking smack because jails are no more places to contemplate over the past, to repent and to modify the behaviour. These places have changed into criminal's advance training centres to make a cir cumstantial criminal a more hardened one. And regarding smack it is very easily available in the four walls of jail, only it needs a few more bucks.

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