In cinema, in politics, drugs have been declared a matter of substance. However, the sober truth is that the capital has only five de-addiction centres jointly run by the government and listed on the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment website, which acts as the nodal body for drug demand reduction. Some have just 15 beds, while others have twice the number, to treat over 2.5 lakh addicts in Delhi according to the findings of these centres; based on admission records of the last 10 years and outreach programmes conducted throughout the year. Money is tight. The centres complain of not having received a single grant in the last one and a half years. The Delhi government had delayed distribution of funds due to sheer negligence.
Activists who work closely with de-addiction centres count only 25,000 addicts in need of immediate drug relief. “These are still only 10 per cent of the total addicts in the city. The calculations are based on those who reach out to government registered centres and the awareness programmes. While the lower classes lack legal IDs, the upper classes live in denial till they reach the withdrawal stage,” says Sanjay Gupta, managing trustee and director of Chetna, an NGO dedicated to the welfare of street children. The Delhi government has no separate budget for de-addiction. The Ministry of Women and Child Development department keeps funds aside for organising awareness activities under its prohibition services and doesn’t give the state-run rehabs any money. The Central government’s budget for prevention of drug abuse fell from `40 crore in 2014 to `18 crore in 2015.
In response to an RTI filed to Delhi’s government hospitals in May 2016 for information on drug de-addiction services offered, specialised drug de-addiction services declined at Safdarjung Hospital & VMMC; Lady Hardinge Medical College and SSK Hospital had just one child addict admitted in IPD in 2014-2015 and none in 2015-2016. No female addicts were registered in both years; Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital stated that the total number of drug de-addiction patients IPD was only six in 2014 and 22 in 2015. The Institute for Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) operated by the Delhi government stated that they have 40 beds available for admission, out of which 20 are for de-addiction. The rest also admit those with psychiatric disorders, diluting the focus of de-addiction.
Dr Atul Ambekar of AIIMS National Drugs Dependence Treatment Centre in Ghaziabad says addiction is seen as part of general psychiatry and a super specialty of addiction psychiatry is urgently needed. “This year, AIIMS has introduced a course that’ll generate five specialists of drug abuse each year,” he says. AIIMS runs two community clinics in Delhi, in Trilokpuri and Sunder Nagri, which engage with low-threshold patients. Dr Om Prakash of IHBAS feels the problem lies in the fact that these rehabs are put under the administration of the social justice ministry when ideally this should be dealt by the ministry of health. That, he points out, is the only way there will be an attitudinal shift in approaching the problem. They both have 40 beds each; while one third of patients recover, another one third relapse during the treatment and the remaining relapse after a year. The success rate is, thus, a mere 30 per cent.
The five registered public-private residential rehabs are situated in urban villages like Amberhai in Dwarka; Nand Nagri near Vivek Vihar; and Mahipalpur near the airport. The buildings mostly have a long dormitory with multiple beds, a recreation room and a withdrawal room for fresh entrants; hand-written moral messages are drawn on chart papers and stuck around. Each has a staff of about 12-15. At every centre, one doctor, one yoga therapist and one clinical psychologist work on a contractual basis. The full-time staff features one counsellor who is mostly a recovering addict, one project manager, one outreach worker and one social worker. The yearly admission in any one centre ranges from 200 to 300, but the relapse rate is as wide as 30 and 90 per cent. Hemant Kumar, now a family counselor at the Dwarka centre, kept relapsing for two decades. He lived in pockets of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where cannabis is legal. Some of his stash came from the grey markets of Barabanki, one of the three legal opium-growing regions in the country. The reason why it took him this long to recover, he says, is that the 120 NGOs run by the Ministry of Health across the country and nearly 400 managed by the Ministry of Social Welfare and Empowerment focus only on detox, which is a three to four week management of withdrawal symptoms. Not detoxification, but rehabilitation is sought.
The Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment, in its 2015-2016 report, states that the grant to NGOs under the Scheme of Assistance for Prevention of Alcoholism and Substance (Drugs) Abuse during 2014-15 for Delhi was 41.6 lakh. “Our payments didn’t come through in March because the state government gave its inspection results to the centre as late as March 31,” say the medical personnel at the Muskan Foundation in Dwarka’s Amberhai village. The management at Bhartiya Parivardhan Sanstha says they don’t have access to a sizeable amount of narcotics that is used in pain suppressants during the treatment. “There is no separate fund for awareness. So, our work starts when it’s too late,” notes Anil Sharma, who plans to shut down his 15-year-old Samaj Sewa Sangh in Bhrama Puri. Even Kiran Bedi’s Navjyoti India Foundation shut down its drug de-addiction services a decade ago due to lack of funds. Government doctors reveal that the 150-odd private NGOs across Delhi aren’t verified by any authority and the use of muscle and stronger substitute medicines for prolonging addiction is rampant.
Today, at least 4 per cent of schoolchildren are substance addicts. Both schools and parents choose to ignore it, says the doctor at the Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses. Avantika (name changed), 21, brought back bottles of poppers (a liquid drug) from Amsterdam. One internet search and multiple answers pop on where to find drugs in Delhi. An insider reveals a lot of drug trade is happening online over bit coins. Street children, says Chetna, are the most vulnerable and spend nearly two to three lakh daily on substances that are sold to them by retailers of chemical products usually at higher costs. In university areas, psychedelic drugs like meow meow and MDMA are trending.
June 26 is the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, another reason for Delhi’s hipsters to smoke-up and its desperate slum dwellers to pass out on streets.