Bashaarat Masood , Naveed Iqbal
- In Srinagar, a family is hoping to miraculously set the clock back on their daughter who lost a year to drugs. The 19-year-old, a “brilliant student” whom her teachers fondly called “Doctor saab”, is now taking another shot at her Class 12 exams
- About 50 km away in Baramulla, a 63-year-old father and his wife are anxious for their two sons who have just returned from a rehabilitation centre; their eldest 32-year-old died in February after a relapse into drugs.
- In Kupwara, further north, a 23-year-old, brought to the state-run Drug Deaddiction Centre by his brother, is terrified — three of his friends are now dead, each due to drug overdose.
In district after district in the Valley, as The Indian Express found travelling to Srinagar, Anantnag, Kupwara and Baramulla, such stories are playing out in homes, hospital wards and deaddiction centres. Jammu and Kashmir’s drug pandemic which, as the first of this investigative series reported Friday, has seen a record seizure of heroin, an unprecedented number of FIRs and arrests and a more than 75% jump annually in the number of patients pouring into the largest drug OPD in Srinagar, has had a devastating human cost.
Must Read | One addict walks into Srinagar OPD every 12 minutes: Valley’s drug pandemic
Of young lives lost, broken homes and relationships, and crippled household finances. “We lost more than one generation of young men to militancy and now drugs threatens a new generation. This is a crisis of not just Jammu and Kashmir but of the nation,” said Dr Sara Khalid, Medical Officer at the Srinagar Drug Deaddiction Centre where she manages the OPD five days a week, seeing about 200 patients daily.
So sprawling is the challenge that since July 2021, after the second Covid wave, in addition to this DDC, as many as eight Addiction Treatment Facilities (ATF) have been set up under the aegis of AIIMS-managed National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre in coordination with the state health department…
After the truth-shower 