Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Thursday asked government to revisit management of drug addiction, treatment and control of drug addicts in a comprehensive manner, keeping in mind the new method globally.
The issue relating the drug addiction, which impacts the citizens of the state, will have to be considered on the special platform, keeping in light the matter adopted by other states in so far as the establishment of drug de-addiction centers, and for rehabilitation of the victims, a division bench of Justice Ramalingam Sudhakar and M K Hanjura said during the hearing of a Public Interest Litigation.
The court also asked the states chief secretary to have meeting with NGOs regarding the issue.
Advocate Javed Iqbal, counsel representing the PIL petitioner said that mental health care has been ignored by the state and its functionaries which is not only unfortunate, unfair, unreasonable and volatile of the constitutional mandate but is also a criminal act on their part. Not only has this been the case with the mental health care but also with drug de-addiction programmes and free availability of psychiatric substances in Kashmir, he said. Drug addiction treatment and control facilities are universally considered as one of the most important components of overall mental health care services. This is the reason that comprehensive drug dependents treatment and rehabilitative services stand established all over the world including different parts of the country. More unfortunately, in the state of J&K particularly in the Valley, the WHO guidelines, national mental health programmes and policies have been completely ignored, Advocate Javed Iqbal said. It has been found that drug related situation in the valley has become extremely grim for want of proper governmental facilities like established de-addiction treatment centers or similar separate treatment services for proper management including treatment and counseling services as per the needs revealed by research results and the legal provisions, he said. “Since it is a hard reality that the people, given the adverse and threatening happening in the Valley for the last more than 28 years, many vulnerable members of the community resort to negative copying mechanism like drug abuse to overcome their worries, insecurity, threats and mental stresses and mental disorders,” he added.
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