Drug addiction still a major issue in Punjab, but parties fail to inject it into poll discourse

PUNJAB: Travelling through Punjab’s border towns and villages during these elections is a trek down the trail of devastation left by “chitta” or heroin as the deadly narcotic is called in these parts. That the crackdown by the Congress-led state government since it assumed power in 2017 has had middling success in curbing the menace is apparent from the simmering anger among families, more evident in the border habitations, but also equally palpable across the state.
With its hold over youth and sometimes even teenage children still strong, the ranks of the unemployed are swelling as addicts are ending up jobless, say people we met along the campaign trail.
The Punjab Opioid Dependency Survey of 2015 conducted by the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, AIIMS, put the figure of dependent users in need of treatment at 3.2 lakh. The latest survey by the same body released earlier this year says the number has gone up to 7.2 lakh.
While in 2017 assembly polls drugs was a big political issue, this time around the issue has not dominated the political discourse in the Lok Sabha elections. Holding both the present Congress government and its predecessor led by Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) accountable for what they face today, a no-holds-bar crackdown on the drug mafia is what a restless public wants from the political parties in the fray.
On the ground, despite the crackdown on drugs, severe restrictions on pharmaceutical drugs and the Outpatient Opioids Assisted Treatment (OOAT) steered by the state since 2017, the drug menace remains severe. As many as 73,400 plus patients registered under the OOAT programme between October 2018 and March this year. While the Akali regime focussed more on de-addiction centres and rehabilitation facilities, the present government is adopting a multi-pronged strategy by focussing on treatment that is accessible and in out-patient mode.
According to doctors monitoring the outreach programmes, during previous elections, the patients at de-addiction centres would reduce indicating enhanced access to drugs, but this time the rehab and de-addiction facilities are seeing more admissions, indicating a stronger crackdown than before.
In election season, TOI drove through Punjab’s Malwa, Doaba and Majha regions to find people talking about the drug problem everywhere. In Patiala’s Nabha region, residents of rural Babarpur escorted this correspondent to a technical college building that is lying vacant. This, they said, had to be locked up as boys from the village made the space a den of addiction.
During a visit to Wadaali in Amritsar, Talwinder Kaur emerged from her house to seek help for her addict husband who has been spending all his daily wages on heroin. She works as a domestic help and claims every home of this Balmiki cluster has one unemployed youth sitting at home, while mothers are away at work to run the house. Seeing the interaction, some youth gather the strength to share their stories. 18-year-old Joga is now undergoing treatment at an OOAT clinic but staying off drugs is difficult given its availability among his friend circle. Stories of a heroin addict who allegedly died soon after injecting a dose of the drug over a month back are still doing the rounds. Similar tales of addiction can be heard in villages of Khaparkheda, Attari and as far as Gurdaspur.