Friday, March 2, 2012

Our Very Own Horror

A news item in the Times of India says:
NEW DELHI: Contrary to the impression that India is being used as a transit point by international traffickers to smuggle Afghan heroin to both Europe and the US, the United Nations drug report, 2011, has said that India is the biggest consumer of heroin. Of the 40 tonnes produced in south Asia, nearly 17 tonnes are consumed in India, the biggest consumer in the region with the trade valued at $1.4 billion.
Did we hear it right? Are we really consuming the 40 percent of the drug produced around us?
Now any institution controlled by interested parties, and the west has been interested in India for long, has to be believed cautiously but in the present case we have absolutely know reason to doubt the report in question.
So we got to take it on the chin.
We have a huge and unnerving problem at hand.
This is a problem to which we need to pay attention at a priority that must be qualitatively higher than, say, polio eradication. No insensitivity intended here. The way this menace destroys human will power is horrendous. We hope the relevant people take heed.