By Mirza Sharafat Hussain Beigh
The war on drugs has intensified, with central and state agencies ramping up efforts to protect the youth from addiction and secure a healthier, more promising future. But emerging trends are disturbing, with increased involvement of men and women in the racket.
On 4 August 2023, a parliamentary standing committee estimated that Jammu and Kashmir has around 1.35 million drug users. The government is primarily responsible for blocking the supply chain of drugs, yet the major stakeholders are those who consume the same without any care for self and society.
On the other hand, J&K Police have made 536 arrests in 415 cases filed under NDPS Act in north Kashmir alone in the year 2024. Srinagar Police also arrested 156 drug peddlers in the previous year. Apart from detentions, dozens of properties worth crores were attached, including residential houses and vehicles acquired through narco-money.
But sadly, psychiatry patients are becoming collaterals in this drug war.
The other side of coin demands attention towards larger population of Kashmir suffering from major anxiety disorders. A research titled “Prevalence of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in the Kashmir Valley” found that 45% of Kashmir’s adult population (1.8 million) was suffering from some form of mental distress. There is a high prevalence of depression (41%), anxiety (26%), post-traumatic stress disorder (19%), and 47% had experienced some sort of trauma.
The study was conducted before 2017, and since then mental health cases have been growing drastically across the region. Meanwhile, a recent report of the National Crime Records Bureau (December 2023) clearly indicated that Jammu and Kashmir had the highest number of reported cases of attempted suicide in 2022.
Out of total 1,769 cases recorded by the Bureau across the country, 497 were reported from the J&K alone. Several patients are regularly seen in unending queues at different private and government administered mental facilities. Many among them are suffering from anxiety disorders, severe insomnia, agitation, and active seizures. They are being prescribed medicines that have calming effect on nerves.
These prescribed medicines are mainly listed in schedule H1 of Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 2013. And significantly, the supply of a drug specified in Schedule H1 shall be recorded in a separate register at the time of the supply, noting the name and address of the prescriber, the name of the patient, the name of the drug and the quantity supplied. Such records shall be maintained for three years and be open for inspection.
It’s privately-probed and publicly-observed that despite producing valid prescriptions for Schedule H1 drugs, about 90% of pharmacists in Srinagar simply evade patients, citing stock unavailability. These methods are used to avoid questioning by drug authorities, as the growing peddling has also increased vigilance on chemist shops selling psychotropic drugs.
Simply, to avoid the methods, as expressed in the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, chemists have not just adopted a practice of denying medicine, but they’re compromising the “access to medicines – a fundamental element of the right to health”. Such a practice sabotages the key element of universal health coverage.
There may not be specific laws and rules to hold chemists liable for denying medicines, yet the practice needs a thorough check, and overhaul at administrative level. The denial of such prescribed medicines by registered druggists is posing a serious challenge to the patients.
This drug denial is bound to escalate Kashmir’s mental-health crisis, if left untreated. It may even force many patients to seek alternate routes for getting required supplies of medicines. That means, it’s likely to bypass registered chemists and create illicit drug supply chain.
So, while cracking whip on drug peddlers, the state administration should never compromise the rational access of prescribed medicines for neuropsychiatry patients. A strict balance is required to be maintained by the enforcing agencies in view of ‘the doctrine of proportionality,’ so that the consequences of partial anti-narcotic drives never impede the access of Scheduled H1 medicine.
The popular government must formulate a policy to prevent the illicit use of drugs while maintaining health care and access of prescribed medicines. Moreover, it’s also duty of drug controller to lay down a procedure for all chemists, so that the medicines are dispensed without evasion and circumvention, as per the valid prescription of registered medical practitioners.
- –The author is Television and Radio News Professional from Srinagar. Views expressed in this article are author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect KO’s editorial policy.
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