Problem of Substance Abuse among Children in Manipur updated at NCPCR sponsored Consultation program, Guwahati

Imphal, 28th March, 2019

Sumatibala Ningthoujam, Chairperson, MCPCR delivering speech on Drug & Substance Use among Children NE States, Guwahati

Sumatibala updated Problem of Substance Abuse among Children in Manipur. During the NCPCR sponsored Consultation program on substance use in Guwahati Smt Sumatibala Ningthoujam, Chairperson, MCPCR has updated the critical problem of Substance abuse in Manipur.

She said that even though the use of various types of psychoactive substances such as alcohol, cannabis, opioids etc had been observed in Manipur for quite a long time, the current dimension of the extent and pattern of psychoactive substance use/abuse and the problems associated with their use have not been assessed adequately.

In the absence of reliable & detailed information about the drug abuse problem in our NE region, it has been a challenge to formulate and implement effective policies & programmes to address the issue of drug abuse in Manipur.

As per the report of the National survey on Extent & Pattern for Substance use prepared by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MOSJE), Govt. of India, it has established that a substantial number of Manipuris used psychoactive substances. Alcohol is the most common psychoactive substance used by Manipuris. After alcohol, cannabis & opiods are the next commonly used substances in Manipur.

The use of cannabis was further differentiated between legal form of cannabis (i.e. bhang) and other illegal cannabis products (i.e. ganja & charas). In Manipur the scourge of drug abuse was realized in late 1980s when a few cases of HIV infection were detected among injecting drug users.

Quickly Manipur with 23% of total HIV infection was on the top of HIV infection in the country. Easy availabilities of drug is also a main cause for drug abuse and addiction in Manipur. The so called Golden Triangle in neighboring Myanmar, Laos and Thailand is an International source of illicit drugs like heroin, etc and Manipur has a porous border of 398 Km with Myanmar. There are several tablets and tranquilizers namely Mandrake, Nitrosun (N10) which are also consumed by many young people in Manipur for the sake of euphoria.

In some cases it also had been reported that tablets which are drugs had been included among the items of delicacies presented to the would be bride and her friends in marriage party. The famous WY tablets were offered to the guest during celebrations of personal entertainment programmes in Manipur. It has been quite a long time since when we have seen many young girls in Manipur consuming tobacco in Zarda Pan.

MCPCR in collaboration with NCPCR have organized a ‘One day Sensitization cum Review meeting on Status of Substance Abuse among Children in Manipur’ on 20/04/2018. The meeting was conducted as a part of an initiative to curb the menace of substance abuse among children in Manipur as a special step towards safeguarding the total wellbeing of children.

The meeting duly acknowledged that there is a large population of children using drugs or narcotics whose physical, mental and psychological health have been greatly affected by their usage of drugs.

Recommendations for addressing the issue of drug abuse:

1) Early identification & prevention of child drug users.
2) Formulation of Anti-Drug clubs.
3) Formulation of core committee for situation analysis, gaps, good practices and way forwards.
4) Formulation of a comprehensive and child centric drug policy in Manipur.
5) To conduct training in collaboration with National Mental Health Programmes.
6) To organize door to door counseling programme with expert and trained person.
7) To initiate children specific response and treatment in order to bring them to the mainstreaming.

In recent time, it has been observed that in Manipur a sizable number of individual used sedative and inhalants. It is to be noted that inhalants are the only category of substances for which the prevanlance of current use among children and adolensent is higher than that of adult.

Manipur Police have become very active and successfully accomplished their professional responsibility of arresting psychoactive substances in bulk quantities and that too very frequently. However the uncontrolled huge supply of drugs/psychoactive substances across the International border is still looming a big problem in Manipur.

(Sumatibala Ningthoujam)
Chairperson
MCPCR