Budgam, 28 July (KNO) : Budgam has been witnessing an increase of drug peddling and drug addiction, youth in this district, are increasingly shifting to harder drugs. “These dangerous drugs cause serious physical and mental problems. It’s horrifying to see the condition of some addicts who need a dose regularly to survive,” said a doctor at district hospital Budgam.
"A number of problems have emerged like depression, OCD, PTSD, Drug Addiction, etc in the district. As long as the problem of drug addiction in Budgam is concerned it has observed district has a tremendous rise in substance abusers over the past three years," he said.
The crisis has deepened so much that the Jammu and Kashmir Police has decided to set up a separate helpline to address cases of drug abuse. In fact, at the security review meeting of the J&K state administration weeks before, the easy availability of drugs became the main talking point. Officials told KNO that most numbers of drug addiction cases belongs to a young generation.
Police officials said that, “the trend of drug abuse is on the rise also among school going childrens, where students of Class 10 to 12 are involved with drugs”. The situation is dire, there is growing concern in district about the rapid rise in drug addiction cases. Officials added that Budgam Police has also made efforts to stop the drug peddling in the district.
As per the top police sources in Budgam, " Budgam Police has seized 101 Kg of poppy straw, 5800 tablets of banned drug Mefar-PD (Tramadol- Hydrochloride) and Spasmo- Proxyvon, 1.7kg charas, 45kg of Bang, 3.5kg fukki, 377 bottles of codeine and 18.5 grams of heroine were seized from January 2019 to 16 July 2019 a total of 39 persons were arrested by J&K police under (NDPS) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Act, 1985, 25 cases have been registered under NDPS act and two hard core Drug paddlers have been booked under PSA since Jan."
The officials continued and said that, "no such case of having drugs and trafficking drugs has come to us yet about girls." However, in the last two decades, the pattern of drug use has undergone a change in favour of new narcotic and synthetic drugs, with addicts now consuming multiple drugs.
Nonetheless, and perhaps not surprisingly, drug abuse does not find any mention in any of the manifestos being distributed by most of the political parties - and many believe there is insufficient political will to tackle this scourge.
“These drugs are mainly coming from poppy fields and commonly from LoC , we have destroyed poppy on almost 116 kanals of land in district.” he said. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Budgam Amod Nagpure, while talking about drug de addiction centre Budgam told KNO that ''Drug de addiction centre Budgam get almost 8 cases every month, Parents came with their wards for their counselling to the centre, they then treat them''.
He also said that ''Scores of youth in Budgam have already launched massive campaign against drugs and create awareness about cleanliness and sanitation of the district and we will cooperate with them to make Budgam district drug free.''
While the area is known to be hit with a same drug problem the campaign is launched to create mass level awareness. ''Police is already checking the suspected vehicles, made arrests, doing raids to stop the drug trafficking and addiction in the district'' he added. (KNO)