Drug abuse has been practiced in one way or another since ages. However, its wide spread use and multi-dimensional implications for the state, society and drugs users are a recent phenomenon. Billions of dollars are spent internationally trying to prevent drugs use, treating addicts, and fighting drug-related crimes. Although drugs threaten many societies, their effects can also be combated against successfully.
This issue is often overshadowed by many of the country’s other human development problems, such as poverty, illiteracy and lack of basic healthcare. The drug abuse is rapidly growing in Pakistan and in South Asia.
Heroin smuggling and its use for funding the Afghan War in 1979 had very serious consequences for the Pakistani society and its youth. Today, the country has the largest heroin consumer market in the south-west Asia region as Pakistan became a major exporter of heroin in the 1980s.
Widespread drug abuse may be indicated by the fact that almost 5% of the adult population is using drugs in Pakistan. As a proportion of drug abusers, heroin users increased from 7.5% in 1983 to a shocking 51% a decade later in 1993. Drug production for Pakistan’s domestic market is estimated at close to $1.5 billion. It appears that only three percent of the gross profits from the illegal opium industry remain within Pakistan.
Like many of the country’s other human development problems, the issue of drug abuse touches the most vulnerable: the poorest strata of society. In addition, the presence of a large drug industry in Pakistan leads to a redistribution of income from the poor to a few rich individuals who control the drug trade.
Drug abuse causes medical and psychological effects. Children and adults need to be told at home and in school about drugs. A second approach is to increase police manpower and powers of the courts to award exemplary punishment to the drug pushers/dealers irrespective of their social and political clout. However, the main focus should be the user who should not be left alone in the fight against addiction. A highly organised institutional framework in the form of NGOs, Madaris and mosques is available in Pakistan which can be used against the menace of addiction. Drug abuse is preventable behaviour and drug addiction is treatable disease.
ZAIN UL ABIDEEN
UCP, Lahore