Pakistan’s huge drug addiction problem

• What to do and what not to do

Behind the tragicomic story of “Kamlesh” from India’s city of Bhopal, whose video went viral on Youtube last year after receiving millions of views, there lies a misery and plight of drug addicts and the parallel, rather regretful, lack of awareness and the required sensitivity that we as Pakistanis should attach to the issue of chronic drug addicts. From the perspective of many middle-class families, an addict at home is a source of dishonour, for lower-class families an economic burden and for the state, simply a symbol of incivility and uselessness. In the context of increasing death-rate due to drug-addiction, how is the gross abandonment of these people by the two major institutions — family and state — any different than the extended form of honour killing and mass murder respectively?

In July 2015, Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) informed the Senate Standing Committee on Interior and Narcotics Control that an estimated of 700 people in Pakistan die every day due to drug-related problems, compared to terrorism-related activities that result in the loss of average 39 lives per day. Here is the irony. Both terrorism and drug-addiction-related problems in Pakistan are conveniently attributed as originating from our western neighbour, Afghanistan, which usually keeps us in a state of denial because both these problems are not home-grown, they are imported. Yet, Pakistan had to spend about Rs800 billion per year on the war on terror over the past 15 years largely from its own resources. Against this expenditure, which obviously is necessary to fight terrorism, the federal budget 2017-18 allocated a mere Rs70 million as ‘National Fund for Control of Drug Use’ as laid out in section 54 of the Control of Narcotic Substances Act (CNSA) 1997. It is simple mathematics. The federal government only wanted to spend Rs11 on each drug addict in 2018.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its 2013 “Drug Use in Pakistan” report released staggering statistics. It says that about 6.7 million people in the country are drug users consuming different substances including plant-based drugs, medical prescription drugs, opioids, opiates (heroin and opium) and tranquilisers. Of these, about 4.25 million are dependent on the drugs ie they feel a constant need to consume more and more drugs. The report also terms this as a “problem for the family” which substantiates the claim that families tend to abandon the drug addicts. It further states, “Three-quarters of opiate users interviewed reported a strong desire for treatment, but cited either a lack of access or an inability to afford treatment.”

What we need to understand is that drug addiction must surely be a sin and a crime, but it is also a problem, just like terrorism, that comes with a solution

The National Anti-Narcotics policy of 2010 had suggested the need for mainstreaming of drug treatment and rehabilitation centres in federal, provincial, district and tehsil hospitals with special wards to be created for such patients so the treatment is made more accessible. Even in the few hospitals where such wards exist today, they usually provide only detoxification, and not the rehabilitation facilities. There is an acute shortage of special hospitals. There are only five such health facilities (in Islamabad, Peshawar, Quetta, Sukkhar and Karachi) that are run by ANF (not primarily responsible for this task) across the country that too are only model hospitals with a very limited capacity of patients that can be treated at once. Nevertheless, the growth of private rehabilitation centres, that remain unaffordable for the overwhelming majority, is thriving.

The provincial governments on the other hand are not only mandated by law under section 52 of CNSA to register all drug addicts for the purpose of treatment and rehabilitation but also to “establish as many centres as deemed necessary for de-toxification, de-addiction, education, after-care, rehabilitation, social integration and for the supply of such medicines as are considered necessary for the addiction of the addicts” in section 53. But it clearly seems that these drug addicts are far less significant, in terms of political economy than the bridges we make under which they are commonly found to inhabit, and perhaps die too.

What we need to understand is that drug addiction must surely be a sin and a crime, but it is also a problem, just like terrorism, that comes with a solution. Addiction may be a source of pleasure and recreation for many, but it is an agony and trap for many more. Where there is a serious need to clamp down on the proliferation of drugs using all our resources, there is a need for the society to change its lens through which these addicts are seen. They are patients deserving our attention, compassion and empathy rather than mere sympathy based on the assumption that they have already conceded against the struggles of life and livelihood.

It may not seem too fair to draw an analogy between things as diverse as drug addiction and terrorism, between abandonment by families and honour killing, between mass murder and state’s lack of sincere efforts to deal with this problem, but we need such extreme reference points to realise the magnitude of loss that drug addiction causes.

If there can be a National Action Plan against terrorism, why cannot be one there for this national affliction that kills far more than the former? We must educate, through curriculum or otherwise, both that how detrimental it is for us to consume drugs as well as to change our perspectives about how and why, scientifically, is it so difficult to quit drug consumption once it is pursued. We need more understanding and empathetic individuals, families and government to tackle this issue which, perhaps, still lingers on the periphery of our conscience.