Understand Addiction Before You Fight It

Editorial:
Sunday was observed as the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Sikkim is under assault from both fronts and going by the way it is handling the situation, it has very slim chances of succeeding. Agreed, there are many working diligently to curtail substance abuse and improve rehabilitation facilities, the State even as a customised Act which addresses the nature of addiction in Sikkim, but good intentions are not always enough.
To begin with, there are no figures available on the extent to which addiction has seeped into the Sikkimese society. In the absence of any data, it would impossible to gauge the success or failure of the anti-drug initiative of Act in the State. Absence of authentic data also runs the danger of diffusing the focus of field workers who would be working blind unaware of whether addiction was on the rise or fall in Sikkim. This is not to suggest that all efforts will prove futile. It is an accepted fact that addiction is a problem in Sikkim, and true to its international trend, is cutting across caste, social and economic barriers and infecting every section of the society. The obvious need is to launch a concerted drive against addiction, but just how wide and how focused this drive has to be can be decided only after the planners know what they are up against. But then, it is typical of Sikkim to go up against a problem without even an inclination of the strength of the enemy.
Flawed though it is, let’s continue on the premise that Sikkim has to continue battling drug abuse till it is completely wiped out. Addiction is essentially a young people’s disease. The youth are inclined to experiment and rebel. This is perfect hunting round for substances of abuse which, with their psychotropic trips, also provide release. Money is not a factor because even the poorest of families have their children caught in addiction. In Sikkim, the most conducive factor leading the youth into addiction is time, they simply have too much at hand and very little to do with it. The State has a policy commitment to address the concerns of the youth but is yet to see any specifically youth-oriented policy or programme take birth. There was a year dedicated to the youth some years ago and the capacity building programmes have come to stay. These are still government-driven initiatives and should have inspired apolitical and civil society interventions which took the policies further. That has not happened.
Returning to addiction, one has to realize that a crackdown on peddling is not the solution. For one, for every drug-bust, there are several shipments which get through. For another, left to the cops alone, the difference between the addicts [who are victims] and the peddlers gets blurred and in the clutter of cases and chargesheets, the social involvement required gets pushed away. Even awareness camps on their own offer no real defence as far as this problem is concerned. Every addict, even before his/ her initiation into drugs knows that it is not the most healthy thing to do. They still experiment, are snared and then seek escape. A stronger focus has to be on rehabilitation, or treatment as some prefer to call it. This is why knowing what we are up against is so important. The relapse rate for rehabilitated addicts is high because they spend months in sanitized and regulated environments only to return to environments which pushed them into addiction. It is important for policy makers, the society at large and cops to realise this challenge of staying clean o that their responses are properly nuanced. Substance abuse is not a solitary indulgence, it is mostly a peer thing and rehabilitating only a section of the group leaves the recovering addict exposed to chances of relapse. Rehabilitation is also a social process and the whole society has to get involved. People have to understand addiction as a disease and a rehabilitated person as a recovering patient. The society also has to stop putting a moral quotient on addiction as this pushes addicts away even when they want to reach out for help. The process is simple- celebrate recovered addicts and their love for life, reach out to those who are still trapped. And act fast, the youth today form the largest chunk of the Sikkimese population, their health should be everybody’s concern.