Considering the co-relation between drug abuse and mental disorder, absence of any up-to-date statistics on the number of persons affected with the problem of drug addiction is seriously hampering the efforts to deal with the twin issues of drug abuse and mental illness in the country.

The investigations by the parliamentary standing committee on social justice and empowerment have revealed that the Central government’s entire energy is currently focused on the problem of drug abuse obtaining in Punjab and Manipur. There have been reports of increasing cases of drug abuse among women and juveniles, too, in the country. There is, however, no data available to launch a targeted campaign to deal with the problem.

Moreover, the efforts at dealing with the drug menace in the country are limited to creating awareness ‘on the basis of a survey conducted by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’ over 13 years ago.

“Taking cognizance of high rates of prevalence of addiction in other states with large population base such as Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, etc., the committee exhorts the Ministry (of Social Justice and Empowerment) not to concentrate only on these two states but conduct awareness generation programme all over the country evenly, giving preference to all states having high rate of addiction covering rural and remote areas so as to also to target poor and illiterate people,” the committee in its fortieth report tabled in the Lok Sabha on 7 May stated.

All that work as suggested by the committee may remain unimplemented in the absence of any data on number of persons with drug addiction (alcoholism and substance abuse).

After much dilly dallying the ministry has now decided to finalise an ‘agency’ for conducting a nationwide survey on drug addiction. The committee has expressed ‘surprise’ that the last national survey on drug abuse was conducted in 2000-2001. It has urged the department to put ‘extra efforts’ to complete the national survey ‘without further delay’.

The committee has called for ‘a focused strategy to conduct a nationwide survey every five years’ to facilitate appropriate planning and funding of strategies to tackle the menace of drug abuse in the country.