A DEADLY DEMAND

Adil (name changed), a bright-eyed 10-year-old from the east Delhi suburb of Kalyanpuri, has been away from home for three months. His father drives an e-rickshaw and his mother is a homemaker. He can’t wait to see his parents again. But not his friends. “They got me into trouble…,” he says. His distraught parents finally brought him to the three-storeyed de-addiction centre at Delhi Gate. Adil finally kicked his craving to ‘chase’ brown sugar.

There are 40 other juveniles at the deaddiction centre. “The victims are getting younger,” says Dr Rajesh Kumar, executive director of the Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses (SPYM), which runs three such centres in the national capital. “A few years ago, our youngest patients were 15-16 years old. Now, we frequently get 10-12-year-olds.” Often banding together in small street gangs, they indulge in thefts to fuel their drug habit before their parents or police bring them to the centre. “I used to carry a blade,” says Adil. “I’d attack people and snatch money so we could buy drugs.”

The National Crime Records Bureau records this trend of young drug offenders. In a report released last month, it noted that cases registered against juveniles under the Narcotics & Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act rose 21 per cent on-year to 264 in 2020, from 23 in 2015 and 82 in 2010.

Of the 50 million drug users in India identified in the social empowerment ministry’s 2019 report, 23 million consume opium extracts or opiates. Heroin is the most common, consumed by 18 million. Moreover, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat contribute more than half to the approximately 6 million people with opioid use disorders (harmful or dependent pattern) in the country.

Users inject, sniff, snort or smoke heroin. Highly addictive, the heroin enters the brain rapidly and binds to opioid receptors on cells located in areas that involve feelings of pleasure and pain and which control the heart rate, sleeping and breathing. The state of euphoria or the ‘heroin rush’ soon gives way to clouded mental functioning,