HYDERABAD: There’s a new low to a high in this city. Recent arrests throw up an alarming fact—school students as young as 13 are sniffing their way into the dark world of expensive, life threatening drugs.Arrests of eight people—five of whom are engineers in multinationals—have revealed that drug runners peddling high-end highs such as LSD and MDMA (methylene dioxy methamphetamine, commonly known as ecstasy) have a clientele of 1,000 people. Of them, many are school and college students, MNC employees and a film producer. An advisory sent to schools by the government warns that students as “young as Class 8 or 9” are buying party drug MDMA and LSD.
Most of the deals were being done through WhatsApp, a mobile app and the internet. A school girl even offered to send her pictures to the drug dealer via WhatsApp in exchange for a high. Kingpins of the trade are using websites and social media to sell drugs by offering discounts on some “special” days, making the addict eagerly wait for that particular day and, in the process, visit the site daily. You need to download an app to open the sites as they don’t open in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. All payments are made via the app.
Most of the students are from affluent families studying in international schools. Ashish Naredi, a parent and a member of Hyderabad Parents School Association, said the drug bust should serve as an eye-opener for parents. “These schools take pride in their elitism. Kids feel it is cool to do drugs,” he said.
A day after the state Prohibition and Excise Department issued advisory notices to 26 city schools asking them to introduce sensitisation programmes in their curriculum, schools washed their hands off the matter stating that monitoring children is the role of the parents. “We have zero tolerance for drug abuse and earmark a day to sensitise our students,” vice-principal of Indus International School, Mohammed Rizwan, told The Sunday Standard. “Parents should not give smartphones to their children. It was through WhatsApp that the peddlers stayed in touch with kids.” Maya Sukumar, principal of Geetanjali School at Begumpet said, “We conduct sensitisation programmes on a routine basis. We had conducted one recently on cyber crimes too.”
With prolongued drug abuse, teenagers fall prey to the ‘mental health destroyers’ that prove fatal. Therapy involving parents, apart from cognitive behavioural and anxiety therapy, is the only way out, which involves counselling sessions with a psychologist. Doctors warn of the ill-effects of drugs, including a potential to stall growth of mental maturity. “More than kids, parents need to be educated on parenting. Even habits such as smoking can influence children to do drugs,” said Dr Prasad of Hope Trust De-addiction Centre, Hyderabad.
Party drugs, especially LSD, create paranoia and hallucination for a long period. If overdosed on, a user’s heart rate reduces or increases, and can eventually lead to psychosis. For unsuspecting children, a drug overdose is no stairway to heaven; rather, it’s their highway to hell.
THROUGH OCEANS OF FANTASY
LSD travels across oceans in vials to Hyderabad by air or sea. Some of it comes through Goa or Bengaluru. It’s originally in crystal form. To convert it into liquid, it has to be dissolved in carefully measured amounts of alcohol. After dissolving, one or two drops are dropped on blots. It is supplied in vials packed in eye or ear drops, blots and crystals, which are sent through tourists or courier. The blots cannot be detected in scanning at airports.
THE PLAYERS
Brendon Ben, an arrested drug kingpin, is just 20 and uses multiple names. He established himself as a key player in supplying LSD in just two years. Ben runs a dog kennel and an event management company. From the eight people arrested, over 800 blots of LSD, 35 gm of MDMA (ecstasy), charas and other drugs were seized. Of them, Calvin Mascarenhas, 28, is a former bank employee-turned-musician. Assistant Excise Superintendent K Pavan Kumar said they to procured drugs from the internet and made payments
using Bitcoins.