Millions of Indians are dependent on alcohol, cannabis, and opiates, and drug misuse is a pervasive phenomenon in Indian society, says a new report, published jointly by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and India's Ministry of Social Justice.
The report was completed more than 18 months ago but was only recently published because its findings were not acceptable to the government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was in power until May this year.
“They [the previous government] did not want to admit the magnitude of the problem indicated by the national household survey and that this too was happening within India—something they considered antithetical to Indian culture and embarrassing,” said a senior government official.
In the national household survey more than 40 000 men and boys (aged 12 to 60 years) were interviewed, while subsidiary studies looked at drug misuse among women and prison inmates and in rural populations and border areas.
Alcohol, cannabis, opium, and heroin are the major drugs misused in India, says the report. Buprenorphine, propoxyphene, and heroin are the most commonly injected drugs.
Applying estimates of prevalence to population figures, the survey estimated that in India, whose population is just over a billion, 62.5 million people use alcohol, 8.75 million use cannabis, two million use opiates, and 0.6 million use sedatives or hypnotics. Seventeen per cent to 26% of these people can be classified as dependent users who need urgent treatment, says the report. About 25% of users of opiates and cannabis are likely to seek treatment, while about one in six people who drink alcohol are likely to do so.
“That drug abuse is an exclusively urban phenomenon is a myth,” said Gary Lewis, the South Asia regional representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Injecting drugs and high risk behaviours are seen in urban and rural areas, he added.
Injecting drugs is fairly widespread throughout the country and not restricted to the northeastern states—the common perception. “It is interesting to note that the abuse of heroin and IDUs [injecting drug users] were also reported from rural India,” says the report. Sharing of needles was common (needles were shared by three injecting drug users, on average), as was unsafe sex.
The potential number of people seeking treatment—about 0.5 million opiate users, 2.3 million cannabis users, and 10.5 million alcohol users—is a serious challenge for India at present, said Mr Lewis. Low enrolment in treatment programmes and long duration of drug use before people seek treatment remain key areas of concern, he added.
Currently India does not have a system of national or local monitoring for drug misuse, said Dr Rajat Ray, head of the Centre for Behavioural Sciences at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and the main author of the report. “Mere building of treatment centres will not be enough, and millions of drug users in the community will have to be motivated, informed, and encouraged to come forward to seek treatment,” he said.