LAHORE: Punjab has the highest number of people who use drugs, with 2.9 million people using illicit substances and 260,000 injecting drugs.
Cannabis is found to be the most commonly used drug in Punjab (3.1pc). Vulnerability to HIV and other blood-borne diseases through injecting drugs is also considerable, reveals the National Drug Use Survey-2013, conducted and launched by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime at a local hotel on Thursday. Adviser to Chief Minister on Health Khwaja Salman Rafique inaugurated the launch of the report.
It reveals how Pakistan’s population aged 15-64 has been facing the devastating consequences of substance abuse. It estimates that six per cent (6.7 million adults in Pakistan) used drugs in the last 12 months. Although 4.25 million individuals were thought to be drug dependent, treatment and specialist interventions were in short supply and were available to less than 30,000 drug users a year.
Moreover, no structured treatment was available to the drug users free of charge.
“In a country where almost a quarter of the population was estimated to be living on less than US $1.25 a day, the barriers preventing access to structured treatment were exceptionally high,” the report says.
Mr Cesar Guedes, representative of the UNODC, stated that the National Drug Use Survey 2013 was conducted for the first time at the provincial level in Pakistan. He said it provided a comprehensive data on drug use and its implications on HIV transmission. The information provided in the report would form the baseline for future planning and designing of drug prevention and treatment programmes in Pakistan.
He observed that Afghanistan had become one of the largest poppy cultivating country in the world. He stressed the need for effective measures to control smuggling of narcotics and to stop the use of drugs not only in Pakistan but also to check the trafficking of narcotics to other countries from this route.
Mr Cesar said the report was the result of a collaborative research effort between the Narcotics Control Division, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, and the UNODC. It aimed to provide baseline information on the prevalence and patterns of drug use among the population aged 15 to 64 in order to inform government, civil society and private-sector organisations in designing and implementing effective prevention, treatment and care services across the country.
Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2014
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