Awareness can help tackle drug menace: Expert

Tribune News Service

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Bathinda, February 6

A two-day national seminar titled ‘India: Existing approaches and agenda of reforms’ to discuss socio-legal and other challenges in the prevention of drug abuse began at Central University of Punjab here on Thursday.

In the keynote address, Dr Satish Thapar said: “The magnitude of the problem is acute and there is a need to look at human development factors such as poverty, peer pressure, family culture and stress, among other factors, that lead to drug abuse. Good family environment, controlling aggression, teaching people to say no, creating awareness about the harmful impact of the substances can help tackle the drug menace.”

“The main issue these days is the penetration of new psychoactive substances such as cannabis, cocaine, LSD, synthetic drugs, party pills and herbal ecstasy, among others. In the past few years, around 50 percent of deaths of drug addicts happened due to overdose of psychoactive substances. Parents must be cautious in case they find child showcasing secretive behaviour, disturbed sleep, blood marks on their body or clothes. Drug de-addiction is a long process but we need to stay put and encourage those who want to shun drugs.”

Prof P Ramarao, dean (academic affairs), said: “Out of 16 crore persons who consume alcohol, around 5.7 crore persons are problem users and 2.9 crore persons are dependent users. According to a report, 3.1 crore people use cannabis (bhang, charas and ganja) and 2.3 crore persons consume opioids (opium, heroin and pharmaceutical opioids). We need to treat the problem as a disease rather than a social problem and consider a drug addict as a patient and take him to de-addiction centre for treatment.”

Vice-chancellor Prof RK Kohli said addiction of any kind was harmful. Habits are easy to form but hard to break.