VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
An entire generation bore the
brunt of terrorism in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Thousands lost their lives.
Even as the Punjabis overcame their grief and fought terror head on, the deadly
drug menace gripped the State, threatening the generation which followed that
of the terror victims. People living in the border areas of the State bore the
brunt of terrorism, now they are face to face with the narco terror, slowly but
surely killing people.
I am not comparing the two
situations. But the plight of an average Punjabi mother or wife living in the
rural areas of the border districts is the same. Mothers lost their sons and
wives lost their husbands during the height of terrorism in the entire 1980s
and first half of the 1990s. Now, mothers are losing their sons and wives their
husbands to drugs. Earlier, the cult of violence was visible with gun toting
men moving around, now drug abuse too is visible with the youth dying a slow,
meaningless and painful death.
Drug abuse is no longer a secret
in Punjab . Everybody in the State knows someone who has
either died of it or is a drug addict. Every person in the State knows someone
who is into substance abuse and has done irreparable damage to himself. There
are families where all the male members are addict and they work only to get
their quota of the intoxicant, not to take care of their families.
In border districts and cities
like Amritsar , petty crime like
chain or bag snatchings, waylaying the pedestrians and robbing them are
committed only to get some money to get the quota of drugs. These drug addicts
and couriers are also in the bigger crime and it has sort of become a part of
the parallel economy in these areas. An Inspector General, earlier posted in
the Border Zone, helplessly told me that the problem had reached a magnitude
where only a war like intensive effort could help neutralise it and for that
too it will take several years if started right now.
“We had cut the supply line of
drugs. We tried surveillance and enforcement, resulting in the smugglers
getting arrested and the addicts starved for drugs. Village elders pleaded that
people will die if they do not get their quota. I saw people suffering from
severe withdrawal symptoms which even led to deaths,” said the police official.
So no one wants the supply lines cut. “If people take drugs, they will die in
say 3-5 years. If it is stopped forthwith, some of them could die in a month,”
he said, pointing to the need of setting up rehabilitation centres on a war
footing and why the village elders do not want the supply lines cut without any
plan to rehabilitate the addicts. Though these centres are there but a lot more
need to be built up on a war footing as supply lines are drying up once again.
Due to the large-scale recovery
in recent months, the smugglers are lying low. But when the demand is more,
they become innovative and use desperate methods to make drugs available as the
prices shoot up, an enforcement official said. “The entire border belt from Ferozepur
to Pathankot has witnessed hectic activity on the part of the smugglers
recently. They are becoming innovative from throwing the drugs from Pakistan to
their Indian couriers waiting near the fenced border, passing the drugs through
hollow pipes across the barbed electric fence and also using the shallow water
in the rivers to cross the border and deliver the drugs,” he said.
In fact in 2014, not a single day
passed when the Punjab Police or the BSF did not recover a huge quantity of
poppy, opium, synthetic drugs and what not. The amount of drugs floating in Punjab
is mind boggling so much so that police officials say that it was futile
guessing it. The source of these drugs could be smuggling from Afghanistan
via Pakistan ,
the inaccessible hills areas of Himachal Pradesh, some quantity from Nepal
and also pilferage from the State controlled poppy farms in Uttar Pradesh and
Madhya Pradesh.
Leave alone the known intoxicants
and drugs, Correction Fluid, used to rectify typing mistakes, is used as a drug
by many in Punjab . Pain killers and tablets to mitigate
stomach ache is taken to get a high. A politician from the Doaba belt told me
that mothers in the area pleaded with him to get chemist shops closed in the
area as they were selling cough syrups, pain killers etc to the addicts and
such shops were of no use to the community.
In fact a Punjab Government
survey sometime ago had revealed that 66 per cent of the school-going students
in the State consume gutkha or tobacco; every third male and every tenth female
student has taken drugs on one pretext or the other and seven out of 10
college-going students abuse one or the other drug. An affidavit in the Punjab
and Haryana High Court admitted that the vibrancy of Punjab
is virtually a myth and many even sell their blood to procure their daily dose
of deadly drugs, even beg on the streets for money to continue their addiction.
It used the word ‘drug hurricane’ to describe the situation which has gripped
the State. Multiple drug dependence is the latest bane in which the addicts get
into several drugs at a time or simultaneously.
It is not surprising that Punjab
has lost its sporting talent and no new sportspersons are coming on the
national stage from the State. Instead, Haryana has marched ahead and most of the
sportspersons from the northern region are not from Punjab
as was the case a few years ago. I am sure the policy makers, politicians
running the State and those in the Opposition, and the bureaucrats know much
more than I do on the prevalence of drug abuse in the State.
It is only now that Chief
Minister Parkash Singh Badal has used his administrative experience to counter
the drug menace and has sought help from all possible quarters to counter it.
Better late than never. It is not only important to break the backbone of the
drug cartel, arrest the big fish under the stringent NDPS act but also start a
chain of temporary de-addiction centres. Weaning away the youth from drugs is a
big task and for this the State Government will also have to look at creation
of employment opportunities, creating infrastructure for recreational
activities and sports, involving the society at large and launching a massive
multi-pronged awareness drive. It is not easy but a beginning has been made and
it was time, this was given the required momentum. (July 14, 2014)
http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/2014-07-13-58239.html
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