Strategy for drug demand reduction in Northeast

Huge seizures of illicit drug and busting of traffickers’ gangs in the northeast region by law enforcement agencies indicate both success of measures to curb the menace and growing magnitude of the problem. In numerous households in the region, deaddiction of addict family members remains the real challenge. The awareness against drug addiction and social support for deaddiction have not been able to match the pace at which illicit drug trafficking has grown in the region. Number of deaddiction and rehabilitation centres in the region is not only inadequate, but there are also allegations of abuse of inmates in some centres. Many of these centres lack adequately trained professionals and inmates are compelled to live in unhygienic and congested space. Reports of alleged abuse of inmates discourage many parents from sending their addict children to deaddiction centres while they are also not clueless how to help them come out of addiction. Occasional surprise inspections at these centres bring to the fore the deficiencies but reports of allegations of abuse of inmates resurfacing in different centres point towards systemic gap in deaddiction measures. Deaddiction and awareness are the cornerstones of the drug demand reduction. When there is fall in demand it will also affect the supply of illicit drug in the region. When supply gets restricted to lesser areas and lesser number of buyers, it becomes easier for anti-narcotic agencies to intensify their coordinated actions to zero in on the traffickers and bust their network. Funds releases to the states in the region under the National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction (NAPDDR) scheme is too little compared to alarming rise in number of addicts. Under the scheme, financial assistance is provided to NGOs for running and maintenance of Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts, Community based peer Led intervention (CPLI) for early Drug Use Prevention among Adolescents, Outreach and Drop in Centres (ODIC) and District De-Addiction Centres (DDACs). Official data shows that Meghalaya has about 2.5 crore drug addict which is 7% of the state’s total population. Fund released to NGO/ voluntary organisation for the financial year 2022-2023 for schemes meant for preventing drug abuse in the state was a meagre Rs 25 lakh. Increasing financial assistance to step up drug abuse prevention need to be preceded by capacity building of NGOs to ensure judicious utilization. Activities under NAPDDR scheme has led to establishment of 342 Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts that provide in-patient treatment to drug users along with counselling, detoxi?cation/de-addiction, after care and re-integration into the social mainstream, 47 CPLI programmes targeting children below 18 to create awareness against drugs and teach life skills, 74 ODICs which provide safe and secure space with provision of screening, assessment and counselling and thereafter provide referral and linkage to treatment and rehabilitation services, 83 Addiction Treatment Facilities in Government hospitals and 53 District De-Addiction Centres (DDACs) which provides all three facilities provided by IRCA, ODIC and CPLI under one roof. These facilities being spread across the country there is urgent need to scale up the intervention and infrastructure through establishment of more such facilities in all states with alarming rise in both trafficking of illicit drug and in number of addicts. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment maintains a helpline number 14446 for de-addiction for providing primary counselling and immediate referral services. Spreading awareness on the helpline number can help those parents and family members, who are afraid to seek assistance from de-addiction and rehabilitation centres for the apprehension of stigmatisation, to seek primary counselling. The affected family also need to relook at family bonds, parent-children communication, discipline within the family to find out if there were any shortcomings to be removed as these often induce drug-seeking behaviour in addicted family member. Strong family bonds and sound communication among each other with mutual respect for difference in opinions, love and affection help build strong personality in individual members which help them to shares their issues and problems and get pragmatic solutions. For children, both the home and educational institutions can become the learning centres for such strong family and social bonds. Such strong bonds will help them understand why some among them fall prey to illicit drug trafficker and how they can be helped to come out of it. The role of society in preventing drug abuse often gets overshadowed when government schemes, interventions dominate the public discourse. The government initiatives are measures aimed at initiating social interventions with the objective that the society will shoulder the responsibility to build the awareness against the menace of drug abuse. A pro-active role by the family and all sections of the society supplement can the efforts by law enforcement agencies in their relentless fight against illicit drug trafficking across the porous international border of the region and bust every single network of traffickers.