On the occasion of International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Sunday, Delhi Police (Shahdara district) in collaboration with the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), held an anti-drug awareness events with the two kilometer ‘Walkathon’ involving police personnel, community leaders, RWAs, schools students and youth volunteers.
Prof R K Dhamija, Director, IHBAS talked about the gravity of the problem of drug abuse in the country as he cited a study published by AIIMS, Delhi recently. It said that India has nearly 16 crore alcohol users of which approx. 3 crore are dependent. “Apart from alcohol, India has nearly 3 Crore users of different preparations of cannabis and around 2.3 Crore users of opioid. The number of suicides due to drugs & alcohol addiction has more than doubled in the last 10 years, as per the Government data,” he added. Echoing similar views, R Sathya Sundaram, DCP Shahadara shared that how in the last two years of pandemic, different challenges have come up for drug users as well as treatment providers.
