New Delhi: In a recent study, Kashmir Valley recently surpassed every other state in India to be among the top two states in the country with regard to drug abuse. And one of the most common drugs used here is Heroin. It was revealed in a study that Kashmir was at the number two slot as far as drug abuse was concerned as the region has left behind Punjab which was considered the hub till recently.
”If we talk about the prevalence, we did a survey last year in which we took samples from all the ten districts of Kashmir Valley. It was done in collaboration with the social welfare department and the Directorate of Health. In the survey, we found the prevalence was around 2.87 per cent and if you compare this to other states, we found it more than Punjab which was considered to be the hub of drug abuse. it equals to around 67000 people, and these were dependent on drugs and mostly on heroin. This is very alarming and most of them were using injections, ” Dr Yasir Rather, Professor, Incharge drug de-addiction centre, SMHS, GMC Srinagar, was quoted as saying by Wion.
However, the good news is that more and more drugs are seeking treatment. A decrease in the availability of drugs in the valley is also a helping factor.
The study has revealed that most of the drug abusers are in the age group of 17 and 33 and are mostly among the unemployed population. The most commonly used psychoactive substance was opioids among these abusers. In all ten districts, 67, 468 people have dependence patterns on psychoactive substances while 5,204 individuals among them were opioid dependent. Heroin was a predominant illicit drug that was used among opioid users.
The Jammu and Kashmir police have recovered Illicit drugs from various parts of the Union Territory worth crores of rupees in the last few months. The police have also said that most of the drugs supplied come from across the border, Pakistan. Many such consignments were recovered mostly in areas close to the Line of Control (LOC), like Kupwara and Uri. Also, a lot of these drug consignments were dropped via drones from across the international borders in different parts of Jammu, Wion reported.
