Over the past week police in Hyderabad have arrested a group of individuals involved in supplying drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy to the more affluent residents of the city. Police claimed to be shocked to discover that the customers of these men included IT employees, members of the film fraternity as well as students from prominent city schools and colleges. The police, which did not reveal the names of the customers, wrote to several schools asking that the educational institutions become vigilant and monitor shops around the schools, and cash available with students. Parents reportedly went into a frenzy over the matter, concerned about their children.
The police’s move, though well-meaning, is limited in that it tells schools and parents about the problem but not what the solution might be. Further, while it is important that schools and parents educate their wards—without judgment—on the dangers of drug abuse, the police and educational institutions show no signs of placing the abuse of substances such as LSD and cocaine, on a spectrum that should begin with alcohol and tobacco.
According to the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, conducted way back in 2009, among students in Class 8,9,10 in India, 14.6 per cent of the students said they were using tobacco and 4.4 per cent said that they were smoking cigarettes. Tobacco has been considered a gateway drug and is easily accessible to children across class and region. A National Commission for Protection of Child Rights survey of child substance abusers in 2015 found tobacco (75 per cent) and alcohol (57 per cent) to be the most commonly abused substances. This is not to say that parents, schools and law enforcement should not be alarmed at children using LSD, but to point out that the approach needs to be to educate children and young adults about legal and illegal substances, and the real dangers posed to young lives and minds by abuse of the affordable, accessible legal substances.