Drug Addiction

Drug addiction is becoming a major health problem in India with some estimates indicating that as many as 15 million people in India are addicts.

A recent report on India by the UN Drug Control program cites that in Delhi, 44.7% of treatment seekers were heroin addicts while alcohol accounted for 26.4%

India has a long tradition of drug use. It harvests the biggest legally grown crop of opium, which is widely used by several Hindu religious groups.

But heroin became a new problem after local drug gangs, linked to international syndicates, decided in the early 1980s to create a domestic market for it, as the ”golden crescent” of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan began to produce more of the drug, peddlers used Pakistan and India as transit points. Delhi, India 2009