City teens fall prey to solvent abuse

KOLKATA: If you think sniffing adhesive or ink whitener was the domain of the street urchins, you are thoroughly mistaken.
Addiction to solvent is no longer restricted to rogues in railway stations or street pavements. Boys and girls from well-to-do families are fast falling prey to this deadly habit.
An alarming number of school students are now being brought to psychiatrists and psychologists after they start suffering from side-effects of the addiction, which varies from change in behavioural pattern to mood swings or development of suicidal tendencies.Schools, too, are waking up to this shocking reality.
"Few years ago, schools would not welcome NGOs and other organisations who wanted to interact with students on this issue. But now schools are realizing about the threat solvent addiction poses to students," said Appejay School principal Rita Chatterjee during a seminar on solvent addiction, organised by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry in association with Mukti Rehabilitation Centre (MRC). MRC runs a drop-in centre for solvent addict children in Sealdah station, apart from running a de-addiction centre at Rajarhat.
There have been numerous cases of urchins, on a high after sniffing adhesive, getting injured while crossing railway tracks or trying to get into a running train. Some even lost their lives after being hit by speeding trains. They get addicted at the tender age of seven-eight years as adhesive kills hunger and it is cheap and easily available. About 25% of these addicts are girls.
"Solvent addiction is no more restricted to street children or urchins in railway platform. I get a good number of children from schools of repute. And the number of these children have gone up by about five to six times in the past three to four years," said Dr Jai Ranjan Ram, consultant psychiatrist at Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals.
"These children need support. One could always start by reaching out to these children on an individual level," said Annop Hoon, chairperson CSR and skill development committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce.