Govt claims belie ground reality

JALANDHAR: Even as the state government has been making tall claims on having controlled the drug menace, the comparative data for years 2016 and 2017 of the number of addicts taking treatment at Model Drug De-Addiction Centre at the Civil Hospital in Jalandhar does not indicate so.

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, January 22

Even as the state government has been making tall claims on having controlled the drug menace, the comparative data for years 2016 and 2017 of the number of addicts taking treatment at Model Drug De-Addiction Centre at the Civil Hospital in Jalandhar does not indicate so.

There apparently seems not much of a difference in the number of patients coming for de-addiction and the situation remains more or less the same. While as many as 6,110 patients turned up for treatment at Jalandhar in 2017, the number was slightly up than in 2016, when 5,925 addicts took treatment.

Along with that in 2017, a total of 723 patients were admitted in the 50-bed centre due to extreme level cases, where as 680 patients were admitted in the year 2016. This is just the data of just one de-addiction centre in the city that has many private and other NGO-operated centres in the city.

Sub-Divisional in charge Dr Nirdosh Goel, who heads the De-Addiction Centre at the Civil Hospital, surprisingly said, “This is a shocking figure and the number of reported cases is much more than the cases registered for other diseases. It is high time this deep-rooted sale and consumption of drugs should be curbed immediately, otherwise it will create havoc in the city.”

And rural belt seems to be the widely consuming drugs than the urban belt. In addition, he added that a total of 94 patients came on 19th of this month and the number of patients who come for regular medication fluctuates between 80 and 100 daily. Last month also in December, 2017, 404 cases were registered and 53 patients were admitted in the de-addiction centre.

Jalandhar Rural SSP Gurpreet Singh Bhullar said, “Last year, the recovery of the amount of drugs has also been noted to have risen five times more than in the year 2016. Even the number of persons arrested for supplying drugs has increased five times.” The orders for conducting regular dope tests for jail inmates might as well reveal more shocking stories.