PREVENTION AND CONTROL OF DRUG ABUSE
BACKGROUNDER
The International Day Against Drug
Abuse and Illicit Trafficking is being observed on 26th
June 2003. This year the theme is "Let us Talk About Drugs…".
India is estimated
to have about 3 million (0.3 percent of total population) people
addicted to different kinds of drug usage excluding alcohol dependents
Over the years, drug addiction is becoming an area of concern
as traditional moorings, effective social taboos, emphasis on
self-restrain and pervasive control and discipline of joint family
and community are eroding. The stresses of modern life are changing
social milieu have also been partly responsible for proliferation
of drug abuse. The introduction of synthetic drugs and intravenous
drug use leading to HIV/AIDs has added a new dimension to the
problem, especially in the northeastern states. The sero-positivity
among the drug addicts in Manipur is about 70 percent.
The Ministry of Social
Justice and Empowerment (SJ&E) being the nodal ministry in
the Central Government for prevention and control of drug abuse
has adopted a three-pronged strategy consisting of:
- Building Awareness and Educating
people about ill-effects of drug abuse,
- Dealing with addicts through programme
of motivational counseling, treatment, follow up and social-reintegration
of recovered addicts, and
- To impart drug abuse prevention
/rehabilitation training to volunteers with a view to build
an educated cadre of service providers.
The Ministry has
been implementing the Scheme for Prohibition and Drug Abuse Prevention
since 1985-86. Under it, grant-in-aid upto 90% is provided to
eligible NGOs for providing services through the counseling and
awareness centres, de-addiction cum rehabilitation centres and
for running awareness programmes. Around 400 voluntary organisations
are financially assisted for maintaining 450 Centres all over
the country comprising of about 300 De-addiction –cum Rehabilitation
Centres and 90 Counseling and Awareness Centres. About 25 crore
rupees are annually released for this scheme. More than 4 lakh
victims of drug abuse are being assisted annually at these Centres.
Over Rs. 140 crore have been allocated under the 10th
Plan for prevention and control of drug abuse.
The Counseling and
Awareness Centres are also engaged in generation of wide range
awareness in varied community settings. These awareness programmes
are supplemented and complimented by the Ministry with active
utilisation of various
media channels for sensitizing the community at large. The overall
approach is to comprehensively address the wide spread ignorance
and lack of information on the ill effects of drug abuse and to
create an atmosphere of abstinence from drugs.
In order to meet
the demand of service providers involved in drug demand reduction
activities and to bring quality improvement in the service delivery,
the SJ&E Ministry has set up a National Centre for Drug Abuse
Prevention (NC-DAP) under the agies of the National Institute
of Social Defence. The NC-DAP is serving as an apex body in the
country in the field of training, research and documentation in
the field of Drug Abuse Prevention and is mandated to serve as
a Centre of Excellence in the region. The Ministry in collaboration
with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) and
the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is implementing a
project on "Developing Community Drug Rehabilitation and Workplace
Prevention Programme". The objective of the project is to sensitize
and train voluntary organisations on prevention of alcoholism
and substance abuse at the workplace. A number of corporate institutions
have also volunteered their involvement in the project.
Available Government
infrastructure and services have been integrated with the services
offered by the NGO sector for dealing with associated health problems
such as TB, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis etc. One of the successful initiatives
towards inter-sectoral collaboration has been the integration
of HIV/AIDS prevention programme into the substance abuse programme
of 100 NGO run Deaddiction Centres supported by the Ministry of
Social Justice and Empowerment.
