Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Meira Kumar has called for a multi- sectoral approach to tackle the problem of drug abuse through suitable strategies and programmes. She has also stressed on accelerating awareness to facilitate a wider reach of information especially among the vulnerable groups including youth, school children and street children. Smt. Kumar said this while releasing a qualitative report entitled “Drug Use in the North-Eastern States of India”, a Monograph compiled by the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). Smt. Kumar said that her Ministry has been   implementing the schemes for prevention of alcoholism and substance (drug) abuse in the country since 1985. She said that the Ministry is providing grants-in-aid to about 375 NGOs for drug de-addiction out of which 46 NGOs are exclusively functioning in the North Eastern States. She said that three out of eight regional resources training Centres in the country have been established in the North Eastern States. The Minister said that a National Centre for Drug Abuse Prevention has been set up which has so far organised 143 training programmes covering nearly 3,323 services provider in the drug demand reduction sector. Smt. Kumar said that ongoing interventions have resulted in reducing the prevalence of HIV among Injecting Drug Users (ID Users) in Manipur and Nagaland as reflected in NACO’s Sentinels Surveillance Round, 2004.

According to the report (Monograph), the drug use in the North Eastern States has undergone a change during the last three decades from traditional use of Cannabis and Opium to smoking and injecting of Heroine. The report adds that HIV epidemic follows the injecting Drug Use (IDU) epidemic as sharing of injection equipment became a norm among ID Users. Giving profile of drug users in the North-Eastern region, the report says that most of the substance users are male. Women constitute only 5-10 per cent but generally they are burdened due to drug use by   family members. The drug users are below the age of 20 years and one-third of them are unmarried. 90 per cent of drugs have been reported to be injecting in Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram. While 50 per cent of the substance users injecting drugs are reported in Meghalaya and Assam. In Arunachal Pradesh 31 per cent of substance users use tobacco, 30 per cent alcohol and 4.8 per cent opium. The report says that 20 per cent to 60 per cent substance users have been reported having sex with sex-workers. It says that interventions to promote safer sex among drug users (both injecting and non-injecting) are important. The report further says that out of the six states in the country, two states are in the North-East namely Nagaland and Manipur featuring “What epidemiologists call a generalized ‘epidemic’ with a strong IDU - HIV link” It says that in Mizoram the epidemic appears to be heading towards generalization. The report adds that equally worrying is the increasing evidence that the non-injecting sexual partners of injecting drug users is becoming infected with HIV mainly in North-Eastern states. The report recommends accurate monitoring of drug use problem.

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