Drug addiction among children is on the rise. Nearly every 10th school child in the country is a victim of drug addiction. This has come to the fore in a survey conducted by the doctors of the psychiatry department of AIIMS on school children in 10 cities of the country. Children are motivated to take drugs by seeing family members and friends consuming tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.
In the survey of AIIMS, it has also come to the fore that family discord is also pushing children towards drugs. Because children are mentally disturbed due to family discord. Because of this, many children start taking drugs.
AIIMS was funded by the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment for this survey. This survey was conducted by the doctors of AIIMS on six thousand school children of class VIII to XII of ten cities in the year 2019-20 before Corona. It included children from private and government schools in Srinagar, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ranchi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Imphal, Dibrugarh, and Delhi. Of these, 52 percent were boys, and 48 percent were girls.
2% of children also use cannabis and charas
Dr. Anju Dhawan, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, AIIMS, said that the survey found that 10.3% of school children are drug addicts, which includes children who use tobacco. 8.3% of the children were found to be using drugs. However, 50 percent of the children in the survey said that they would not share information about drug addiction. Therefore, the number of children who are addicted to drugs can be more than 10.3%. It was found in the survey that two percent of the children are addicted to cannabis and charas. 0.6% of children use sedatives for intoxication and 2.5% of children use other drugs, 1.9% of children use snuff.
On average, children start intoxication at the age of 13
School children, on average, begin drug addiction at the age of 13. Many children take drugs for the first time as an experiment after seeing family members and at the behest of friends, but later they fall prey to it. It affects the education of the children.
Apart from this, aggression increases in children. Because of this, their relationship with parents and friends also deteriorates. They start engaging in illegal activities. Mental distress was seen in a quarter of the children who had been drugged. Five to 10% of children take drugs every day and ten to 20% of children once a week.
A 2013 government report showed that one out of every five drug addicts in India is under the age of 21. Experts believe that many children start taking drugs for intoxication from the age of 11, because of the eyes of the people around them, peer pressure, and worry about studies. Of these, about 5 percent were found to be between 12 and 17 years of age.
This problem is even more serious among homeless children. The report found that 40-70 percent of India’s 20 million homeless children are exposed to some form of drugs, and many of them are addicted to drugs by the age of five.
Therefore, Prevention of dangerous addiction at the very beginning is the most effective solution. We have to run an awareness campaign against drug addiction and its ill effects among sections like school children, college-going youth. The youth of weaker sections often fall prey to this menace. its difficult, but not impossible.
