On a self-destruct mode
By Kuldeep Chauhan

AT 19, Sonia is a college dropout. Her brown-streaked hair needs retouching. Even though she is in the prime of her youth, she appears to be "burnt-out". Her eyes are glazed and dreamy. Her frail frame in torn jeans and a jacket with stone-beads around her neck and wrists lend her a"hippy-like" look.

Sonia is high on drugs, alcohol and charas most of the time. Whenever on a "drug trip", she hitch-hikes out of Shimla with her friends, who, too, are drug addicts, for the desired "kicks" to Manali, Dharamsala and Chandigarh. "God is watching all this... He is great.... And the world is cruel... I don’t remember when I last went to my maternal uncle who hails from Kotgarh", she talks non-stop, contradicting many things at a time.

But Anil Sharma, 20, doesn’t appear as "outlandish" as Sonia looks. He has failed his B.Sc. I examination at government college, Sanjauli, because he too has joined the self-destroying bandwagon of drug addicts. He takes charas, heroin and drugs and other sleep-inducing capsules and tablets that keep him in a world of phantasmagoria and make-believe for hours and even days together.

Anil was a boarder and hails from an "illiterate" middle-class family from Chopal. When he falls short of money, he borrows it from his relatives and at times even resorts to cheating his acquaintances out of their money. "I have to get my stuff at any cost. When I don’t take the dose, I have a craving like mad", he says, while his hands shake and sore lips quiver.

In the same way, Karan Chauhan, a plus two student at Shimla, has recently developed a taste for cough syrup. Late evening, he can be spotted buying these syrups at a popular chemist shop in Sanjauli. Then he ducks into a dark side alley, and in one long sip gulps down the entire bottle. He comes back to a dhaba where he enjoys a hot cup of tea with his friends.

"After taking the syrup, the hot cup of tea acts like a stimulant. It is a trip where I feel happy, romantic and lost in my own world", says Karan in a choked voice, while his eyes look at you blankly. Like Karan, you find dozens of others doing the same thing at various dhabas located in different parts of the town.

But Binu, a sensitive introvert boy of 15, who comes from a middle-class family residing in Jubbal, went a step further: he ran away from home. One fine day, he left for his school at Shimla and never returned home. His parents went from pillar to post searching for him. But even after two years, they have no clue about his whereabouts.

Binu had been thrashed by his guardians when they learnt that he was neglecting his studies and had started taking drugs along with his school mates. "He rarely played with other children and would talk less", recalls his mother, bursting into tears.

Sonia, Anil, Karan and Binu (not real names) are all gentle, sensitive youngsters. They represent a growing number youngsters who are becoming drug addicts. Over the years, their number is multiplying alarmingly in this erstwhile summer capital of the Raj and other Himachal towns, particularly those frequented by tourists.

The irony of the story is that while charas, marijuana, bhang and hashish have become the cause of ‘slow death’ of the addicted youth, they are also a source of income for the "cash-strapped" people living in the far-flung areas of the state -- Malana and Inner Saraj in Kulu and other parts of Shimla, Sirmaur, Mandi and Chamba districts where the poppy and hemp plants flourish naturally in large number. While poppy gives narcotics like heroin; the hemp plant yields marijuana and hashish.

The local drug traffickers and reportedly a few foreigners who have settled in the Kulu valley and have married local women, act as middle-men, disbursing charas and hashish to various parts of the world through a chain of smugglers who masquerade as tourists or traders.

There are local contraband drug traders who disburse drugs directly to the actual takers. Last year, four girls of an elite convent school in Shimla were rusticated as they were caught taking drugs on the school premises. "A taxi raced past the school after handing the packets to the girls," says one of students.

Studies show how a dangerous cocktail of alcohol, charas, drugs and smoking ruins the health and career of hundreds of young college and school students. The addiction causes schizophrenia, a mental disorder that reduces the life span of the victim drastically. Since many of these young victims lack parental love, care and treatment, drug addiction is dangerously developing into a runaway subculture in cities and towns.

Most addicts lead a life which is relatively normal. But there are others who become a public nuisance. Last year, the police caught five youths, all of them addicts, involved in the looting of a tourist bus. All of them have a disturbed family atmosphere. The father of one of the youths had left home. Earlier, his daughter was rusticated from Shimla’s elite girls’ college.

Some youngsters fall prey to drugs due to depression and tyranny that result from the hard work required in the professions like medical and engineering. A number of MBBS students at Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, take psychiatric treatment at the hospital every year, while a couple of them have even committed suicide. According to college sources, there are others who take the drugs, charas and sleeping pills from time to time.

The college authorities, who are tight-lipped about this unhealthy trend, hold the view that depression and ‘such things’ are normal in a professional institution. But the students believe that "teachers sometime act like tyrants and their acts can sometimes push the over-sensitive youths like Sodhi, Balbir and Negi to the edge." These three students committed suicide because of depression that resulted from their failure to clear supplementary exams.

Most of the addicts have their favourite hideouts. Some sit in city’s dingy dhabas and restaurants, sipping tea as a cover-up. Everyday, one can spot dozens of empty bottles of cough syrup on the ledge of the ventilators of toilets in restaurants.

Others, like Karan and his friends, retreat almost daily into the nearby jungles of Jakhu, Mashobra and any other suburban towns where they can have a "wild kick" freely. "Whenever I can manage, I make a trip to Manali, or Manikaran or Chandigarh with my friends where we socialise freely, drinking, dancing and smoking bhang and charas", says Sonia, pointing at the beads around her wrists which is something of a "cult symbol" that shows her taste for the "drug trip".

The network of drug traffickers operates directly under the nose of the police. "Where don’t you get drugs? You get them at every chemist shop; you get charas from the taxi-drivers, at tea stalls and certain restaurants on The Mall where dealers directly sell them to the customers," informs Anil.

While the young addicts are wrecking their world, city’s chemists and smugglers are doing a brisk business. As the drug addicts are growing in number, the drugs like cough syrups and tablets are selling like hot cakes even at exorbitant prices in many towns and cities. All of these drugs are popular among the addicts.

The raids on the suspected chemists and drug dealers remain an eyewash as they enjoy political protection. Last year, the police raided a few chemist shops at Sanjauli and Shimla and recovered the stock of drugs that was much more than what they can legally keep. "A local dhaba owner was jailed for selling charas, but there are others who still remain free" says a police source.

From September to November, the hemp plants are ready for harvesting and processing. A villager who rubs charas, gets Rs 40 for every 100 gm of it from the local dealer, who, in turn, sells it for more than three times the price to the city-based smugglers, who actually earn most of the profit.

Before the things go beyond control, there is a need to understand the whole problem that generally revolves around youth culture. The impressionable youngsters need love and sympathy. An addict must not be labelled or stigmatised. He should be cajoled out of the socially deviant behaviour and involved in constructive activities.

To win the war against addiction, we will have to fight out many battles, individually and socially. The government must strictly enforce the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, that provides for strict punishment for the culprits. Locals who grow the hemp and poppy plants must be encouraged to grow alternative healthier cash crops of fruits and vegetables. And, the police must enlarge its ring to nab the suspects.