'Chasing the high': Drug abuse in City

A Sakshi TV programme, Vimukti, aired on Independence Day showed the extent to which the menace of drug and substance abuse has caught on in the twin cities. Increasingly, teenagers and college students seemed to be getting hooked to drugs, if one were to go by the number of rave parties and raids that police have conducted, resulting in huge hauls of drugs and deadly narcotic substances including cocaine.

Police authorities say that they had not expected this vicious menace to gain ground as rapidly as it has, in a conservative city like Hyderabad.

Some are 'caught' young due to peer pressure or trying something for the sheer novelty of it. Gradually, they sink deeper into what appears to be a bottomless pit and are abandoned by most people around them--family and friends. The addiction takes a heavy toll of their educational careers, jobs and personal lives. A fortunate few seek rehab and get transformed by it. Some bounce right back into addiction after rehab. Among the worst affected are street children, many of whom can be found around the Secunderabad Railway Station. They buy the relatively inexpensive whiteners and sniff their way to addiction.

Former City Commissioner of  Police , A.K. Khan says that blaming the police alone is hardly the right approach, especially when parents tend to give as much as anything between Rs. 2.5 and 3.5 lakhs as pocket money to their children, apart from expensive cars. When parents spend excessive amounts of time in Clubs and leave their children to their ways, some of them get drawn to drugs, he said. He added that the society at large, parents, NGOs and police must fight this menace unitedly. The problem was beginning to creep to places like Vizag and Tirupati, he said.

Most parents are in a state of denial about their children when it comes to their addiction to drugs, according to Rajeswari Luther of HOPE Trust. She said that it would be a fallacy to assume that the problem cannot affect 'us' and likened the drug menace to a time bomb ticking away. Luther said that while organizations like hers tried to run awareness programmes, some schools and colleges did not see the need for such campaigns. The specious reason they offered was that an awareness programme of this kind would affect their 'image'. The problem was far more widespread than we tend to think, according to her.

The show featured former drug and substance-abuse addicts who got reformed after rehab. At the same time it shed light on the frightening proportions that the menace began to assume with even some girls falling prey to it. Girls, Luther pointed out, had morality issues and were less open about their addiction. Resultantly, the process of rehab gets extended in their cases sometimes.