Kashmir's drug problem worsens as even 10-year-olds fall prey to heroin abuse

A senior police officer said the heroin is coming into Kashmir from Pakistan and Afghanistan

Children as young as 10 years old are falling prey to heroin abuse in Kashmir raising alarm bells for doctors and parents, who foresee a doomsday scenario if the problem is not nipped in the bud.

When doctors examined Shahid (name changed), a 10-year-old boy from north Kashmir at the drug de-addiction Center of SMHS Hospital in Srinagar, they were shocked to know that he was a heroin abuser.

Shahid was brought to the hospital by his father and uncle, who themselves are chronic drug abusers. The 10-year-old boy is currently on Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST), a treatment regimen that makes it possible to give up heroin and other opium derivative drugs, highly addictive and with life-threatening consequences.

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Dr Yasir Rather, a consulting psychiatrist at Government Medical College (GMC) Srinagar, says Intravenous heroin at such a young age is devastating. “The boy had seen his family (father and uncle) abuse heroin through syringes. The curiosity and availability (of heroin) made him take such a step that could cost him his life,” he told DH.

Dr Arshid Hussain, Professor of Psychiatry at IMHANS, who has been among the first doctors in Kashmir to have worked on drug addiction, said in the last few years not only the age of starting experimenting with drugs has lowered, but now deadly substances like heroin has replaced Cannabis, shoe polish, and correction fluids.

“Before 2015 there were hardly any heroin abusers in Kashmir. Cannabis, shoe polish, and correction fluids were used as drugs. Most of the addicts then had a dark past, were affected by the violence and belonged to a particular socio-economic background,” he said.

But now, Dr Hussain said, the situation has changed entirely. People are taking deadly drugs like heroin and there are educated ones as well which include government officials, students and those from well-off families.

“The number of cases of young people addicted to dangerous drugs like heroin has increased since 2018 and young boys in early teens consuming drugs is now common,” Dr Hussain added.

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Nayeem Ahmad, a parent whose son studies in a prestigious missionary school in Srinagar, says the law-enforcing agencies every now and then confiscate a haul of heroin and claim it a “success” against “narco-terrorism.”

“But unfortunately, the menace is spreading. I am always concerned about my son as the menace has spread its tentacles deep in Kashmiri society. There is no tangible effort to nip the evil in the bud neither from civil society nor from the authorities,” he rued.

A senior police officer said that the heroin is coming into Kashmir from Pakistan and Afghanistan. “There are no labs to manufacture heroin here. All of it comes from Pakistan and Afghanistan. They (drug dealers) have a network spread from the Line of Control to the Valley, and it is spreading across India too,” he revealed.

As per J&K police data, in 2020, 36.08 kilograms of pure heroin and 49.7 kilograms of brown sugar were recovered from different parts of the Valley. In the first six months of this year, heroin worth hundreds of crores of rupees has been seized in Kashmir.