Attack drug traffickers, save drug abusers

Today, June 26, is "International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking" as declared by the United Nations in 1987.
 Drug abuses and its illicit trafficking are crippling generations of people all over the world, causing about 200,000 deaths each year. Those addicts who are waiting to die are helpless, unproductive and an unbearable burden on the part of their parents, guardians, communities and nations, spawning criminal offences, especially in a developing country like ours where the government is incapable or negligent in stopping the abuses and illicit trafficking through their slack law-enforcement agencies. Drug abusers and drug traffickers thrive in such countries.
Unless and until one visits a drug rehabilitation clinic it is not possible for one to understand the extent of the plight of a drug addict and empathise with his or her pains. I had a chance to visit such a clinic at Banani where a son of my friend was admitted. The tall and handsome boy was a brilliant student of Barisal Medical College after passing his SSC with distinctions from Mymenshing Cadet College.
He was jilted in a calf love. Influenced by a drug-addicted friend he tried to find solace from dwelling in an imaginary world of fantasy and took drugs that gave him abnormally acute pleasure through euphoric effects of the drugs that altered his brain chemistry and physiology. He became emaciated. His eyes were hollowed. His every limb, even his lips, trembled. As I tried to console him he cried like a baby. He was too weak to control his emotion. I also failed to control my own emotion when I heard the harrowing story of the boy who took more and more drugs to fulfill his never-ending need to achieve his ever-increasing desire for those euphoric moments. He grew drug-dependent despite the many negative consequences.
Years back, I witnessed a heart-breaking pick-pocketing incident on a broad daylight at Nawabpur Road in Dhaka city. The incident turned my ideas about crime topsy-turvy. That day I realised crime is not always a crime as we see it and how grossly a criminal is sometimes misunderstood.
I went to Nawabpur Road to buy an electric blower. As I was coming out of the shop with the blower I found a young boy naively putting his hand inside a man's back pocket and picking a moneybag, the way a friend sometimes jokes with his buddy. There was no trick, no runaway, no reaction, and no compunction on the part of the pick-pocket. In no time there were blows and kicks from the crowd on every body part of the pick-pocket. Surprisingly, the pick-pocket was neither crying nor appealing for mercy. It was a risky job to side with a pick-pocket. Still, I cried out: "Please stop. This boy may be terribly sick. Better hand him over to police." As a policeman was taking him to a nearby police outpost I followed them out of curiosity. At the outpost I discovered that the pick-pocket was a drug addict.
More tormenting was the knowledge about the present-day pick-pocketing trend that I garnered from the officer-in-charge of the police outpost. The officer said: "Nowadays criminals find pick-pocketing not rewarding at all. Only the fools like drug addicts do this job when they are cashless. Sometimes, their withdrawal symptoms become so horrible that we have but to buy such a drug addict in our custody a sachet of drugs to calm his rage." Later, a doctor friend of mine told me such drug addicts are like a stunned animal; their brains lose the ability to transmit the vital alert signals.
Drugs, as I have learnt from Caron, a free online knowledge library, affect brain by acting like neurotransmitters in disguise.  Some drugs, like marijuana and heroin, have chemical structures that mimic actual neurotransmitters and "fool" the brain into activating nerve cells.  Other drugs, like amphetamine and cocaine, cause the nerve cells to release unnatural amounts of neurotransmitters, disrupting normal communication and flood the brain with irregular quantities of chemicals that over-stimulate the system. Thus, most drugs of abuse target the brain's reward system by inundating the circuits with dopamine and similar neurotransmitters or preventing these neurotransmitters from working naturally. When the drug user's brain is flooded with dopamine, the addict feels intense pleasure. This activates a reward circuit in the brain, teaching the drug user to repeat the rewarding behaviour.
In Bangladesh, the common drugs boys, girls, adults and even some old people take are opium (Ganja), Chorosh, Bhang, Sleeping pill and Phensidyl. Those who can afford to pay a little more will find Yaba, Heroin, Pethindine, Diazapam or Dexpotent and the list goes on.
At the early stage a person takes drugs just normally, be it marijuana, heroin, hashish, Phensidyl cough syrup, or any psychoactive substance, and gets ecstatic matter-of-factly. Drug makes him feel elated and gay. He feels light and levitated and dreams himself floating in the sky. He goes on increasing the doses of his intake to enjoy more and more those ethereal feelings, ultimately to be dependent on the drugs.
Now he is a serious addict, forgetting his education, home, friends, and society. His only refuge is the den, somewhere in a lonely hangout, where along with his fellow addicts he passes his time not knowing it is day or night. He loses all the normal wills and wishes. He does not get any taste in any food or drink. Sex by now is completely an unknown domain to him. He loses all the parental or filial respects and love. He has a hazy notion of what he wants. Everything is blurry and fuzzy to his eyes. On sunny days he only finds indistinct shapes in the gloom. He finds it tiresome to recollect anything in the past. One day as he gets too weak even to find a bed to lie on, he silently drops down - only to be dragged to his grave.
You will find some boys and girls at Dhaka, especially near the universities, hanging out at different restaurants, their hairs unkempt, and their dresses sloppy. Just try to overhear their conversations. They are smart. They don't talk like a drunk. But there is a peculiar dragging tone in their voices; they breathe heavily and take unnecessary pauses even in a sentence. Look at their eyes and lips. Their eyes remain peeled most of the time. Their lips are whitish with some black spots. Chances are that they are drug addicts in the making. Their parents are unaware of their gradual slipping into the dark world of drugs.
Bangladesh is unfortunately situated in the vicinity of the 'Golden Triangle' (Mayanmar, Thailand and Laos) which is notoriously known as the network for trafficking drugs. Drug abuse and its illicit trafficking through our porous borders is now a growing national concern.  There are millions of drug addicts in Bangladesh and the majority of the drug addicts are very young and they are from all strata of the society. They desperately need helps from you and I.
The law-enforcement agencies, if they are not otherwise too busy currying political favours, can do something to arrest the ominous trend of drug abusers by keeping a vigil eye on the drug dealers. The Narcotics Department and other related agencies could also play their roles if their people could not easily be duped and bribed. Expecting the government alone to deliver services in checking drug abuses and drug trafficking may not be wise. It is only people who should fight. Of course, the media, the NGOs and donor agencies may do a lot to save our future generations from being doomed by drugs.
To save the country from an epidemic outbreak of deadly drug abuse there has to be multi-pronged attacks on the unauthorised drug sellers and drug traffickers. Extensive publicity through banners and hoarders has to be unleashed. Horror documentaries, dramas and films have to be produced that may instill into the minds of people, especially the children, a spectre of fear about drug abuses.
If we cannot keep our young boys and girls busy with their studies, exercises, sports and religious activities and help them occupy their vacant brains with some constructive hobbies and occupations, leaving not a micro-micro-millimeter of space in their brain for a devil to creep in, they will remain susceptible to drug abuse, whatever measures the guardians, the government or the non-government bodies take to rid our society of the anathema of drugs.
We have to watch when our boys are bored and spend excessive time in obsessive entertainments like phoning day and night, facebooking round the clock, playing video games during study times, and taking potato chips instead of regular meals. This is the time their brains are getting dangerously void and the right time for intervention from their guardians and their teachers.
You and I can also contribute our mite by advising a child we come across in our neighbourhood about the horrible curses of drug abuses. Don't stigmatise a drug addict if you happen to meet him. Better hug him a bit tightly and whisper to him that it's not too late and he would soon be okay. But don't forget to tell people that a pick-pocket was not a born criminal; he was perhaps a helpless drug addict.
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