Drug Addicts will Rise to 6.48m This Year

Drug Addicts will Rise to 6.48m This Year

* Over 60 percent of addicts belong to the educated class, says Dr KausarStaff ReportLAHORE: The number of drug addicts in Pakistan will exceed 6.48 million in 2005 according to a 1993 national survey on drug abuse, said Dr Wasim Kausar, a deputy inspector general for the National Highway and Motorway Police, while delivering a lecture on ‘Drug dependence in students’. The lecture was arranged by British Council Lahore in collaboration with the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) on Wednesday. The British Council’s branches in South Asia have also planned a public awareness and research campaign to combat the increasing number of addicts. Dr Kausar’s lecture was part of the council’s initial campaign. The campaign has been initiated under the council’s ‘Beyond Borders’ project and aims to create public awareness about the causes of drug abuse. With reference to Pakistan, the project aims to create awareness about the country’s rehabilitation facilities and problems in the rehabilitation process. The project will highlight that drug abuse is prevalent in the entire society, not just the poor, unemployed or illiterate. In Pakistan the British Council is collaborating with LUMS and Punjab University. Shazia Khawar, the Youth Projects manager for British Council Pakistan, told Daily Times that the project was a comprehensive strategy to be gradually inducted in society. She said that the council had also planned public awareness festivals, adding that the first festival would be held in Dhaka (Bangladesh) in mid-February and in Pakistan in March. She mentioned that a series of lectures and community researches with the help of university students were also in the plans. Earlier, Dr Kausar, who has done a PhD on the subject from the UK, said that as per the survey there were 3.01 million chronic drug-abusers in Pakistan, increasing by 7 percent a year. He said that the addicts numbered 3.5 million by 1995, 4.8 million by 2000 and the projected number of addicts in 2005 was 6.48 million. “Almost 3.20 million addicts are addicted Heroin,” said Dr Kausar adding, “Drug-abuse in Pakistan was not a serious issue until the emergence of Heroin in the 1980’s.” According to him, people were also addicted to Cannabis, Opium and Alcohol but their numbers had not increased as dramatically as those addicted to Heroin. “Unfortunately, 60 percent of the addicts belong to the educated class and most of them are university students”, he pointed out. He lamented that no serious study was undertaken, even after the 1993 survey. He added, “A few fragmented studies have revealed that one out of every ten university student is a drug addict and over 50 percent of them are in a high risk drug abuse environment”.He said that Pakistan was ranked number in the world for drugs usage by the Interpol’s drug subdivision ‘Trends in Worldwide Drug Trafficking in 1990s’. He added that Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Iran were on first four positions.