3 of 10 girls on drug abuse: Pb

CHANDIGARH: Laying bare a home truth in its response to a plea filed by some NGOs seeking right to continue with rehabilitation of drug addicts, Punjab government on Friday stunned the Punjab and Haryana High Court with its candid admission that the state was ���in the grip of a drug hurricane��� with at least one addict in 67% of rural households. Still worse, three out of 10 girls in the state were said to be on drugs.
Emphasizing that ���vibrancy of Punjab is virtually a myth���, Harjit Singh, secretary, department of social security and women and child development, further revealed in the report on implementation of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act in the state that 66% of school students had gutkha or tobacco addiction, while 70% of college students abused some substance or the other.The extent of addiction could be gauged from the fact that ���every third male and every 10th female student has drugs on one pretext or another���. While Tarn Taran had the dubious distinction of being the most-affected ���rural��� district, Amritsar topped the ���urban��� category. The report disclosed that a staggering 65% of families in Majha and Doaba were hooked to drugs, while Malwa followed closely at 64%.
Light was thrown on the fact that medicines like bruffin, proxyvon, diazepam and combiflam were among the most commonly-abused substances, while hard drugs like heroin had 16% of state���s population in their hold even as alcohol consumption too was on the rise.
On drug-trafficking, the report admitted that Punjab remained vulnerable because of its proximity to the Golden Crescent comprising Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. That nearly 40% of narcotics routed to India passed through state���s porous borders which attracted hordes of drug-peddlers.