Nasha Mukt Abhiyaan

The launch of the 100-day Nasha Mukt Jammu Kashmir Abhiyaan and the nomination of twenty of the UT’s most senior officers as District Mentors marks one of the most organised and high-level administrative responses to the drug menace that J&K has witnessed in recent years. The urgency embedded in this initiative is not performative. It reflects a grim and rapidly worsening reality. The drug crisis in J&K has long ceased to be a peripheral social concern. It has crossed the threshold into a full-blown public health emergency, one that is consuming the youth of the UT at an accelerating and deeply alarming pace.

The scale of the problem, even as captured by available data, is staggering. A joint survey conducted in 2022 by the Health and Social Welfare Departments across ten districts of Kashmir alone found nearly 70,000 individuals involved in substance use, of whom approximately 50,000 were heroin users-most consuming the drug intravenously. The situation in the Jammu Division is no different. What the numbers do tell us is that addiction in J&K is not a fringe phenomenon; it is widespread, entrenched, and expanding. Consequences include the risk of fatal overdose and the transmission of life-threatening infections such as HIV and hepatitis C. Every statistic represents a fractured family, a future foreclosed, a young life consumed by dependence before it has chanced to flourish.

The ease of drug availability is at the heart of this crisis. Narcotics are accessible with disturbing ease across the UT-in schools, colleges, neighbourhoods, and even rural panchayats. This accessibility cannot exist without systemic enforcement gaps. Choking this supply is indispensable. Yet the fight against drug addiction cannot be reduced solely to interdiction and enforcement. “Don’t Touch the Innocent and Don’t Spare the Culprit” is a formulation that draws a firm moral and administrative distinction between the trafficker and the victim. Prevention and rehabilitation are equally important. It is here that the Nasha Mukt Abhiyaan carries its deepest significance. The nomination of senior IAS and other high-ranking officers as District Mentors for all twenty districts of the UT-tasked with monitoring awareness campaigns, coordinating with health and enforcement agencies, identifying substance users, overseeing de-addiction referrals and rehabilitation, and generating measurable outcome data-represents a structural shift in how the problem is being approached. It signals that the administration is treating the drug crisis not as a routine welfare matter but as a governance emergency demanding commensurate institutional attention.

Awareness among the youth is arguably the most powerful preventive instrument available. Young people who genuinely understand the physiological devastation wrought by drugs, the irreversibility of addiction once entrenched, and the social and familial consequences of substance dependence are far less likely to experiment with narcotics in the first place. Schools, colleges, NSS and NCC units, panchayats, youth clubs, and religious institutions all play a vital role in sustaining this message. Awareness, however, must not be confused with one-off lectures or seasonal rallies. It must be embedded as a continuous, year-round curriculum of sensitisation-sustained, adapted, and refreshed so that it does not lose its impact. A drive that peaks during a 100-day campaign and then fades is insufficient. The fight against narcotics demands institutional endurance, not episodic exertion.

Rehabilitation is equally indispensable on the post-addiction front. Once addiction takes hold, recovery is a prolonged, clinically complex, and emotionally demanding process. The current landscape of de-addiction facilities in J&K is functional but inadequate-plagued by shortages of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and trained counsellors. Equally worrying is the fact that no consolidated assessment has been conducted on the recovery outcomes of patients passing through these centres. Families, too, are silent victims of this crisis. The stigma surrounding drug abuse often leads families to conceal addiction rather than seek timely help, allowing dependence to deepen until it becomes life-threatening. Dismantling this stigma is as important as any institutional intervention. Abhiyaan should focus on this also.

Jammu and Kashmir stands at a critical juncture. The Nasha Mukt Abhiyaan offers a meaningful corrective. Security forces must dismantle the trafficking networks. Civil administration must own prevention and rehabilitation. Communities must become active participants in protecting their own youth. And above all, these efforts must be unrelenting.