Drug Abuse Surging in India, 57 Million are Alcohol Dependent - Survey

Commissioned by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, the report revealed that 160 million Indians aged between 10 and 75 years consume alcohol.

New Delhi (Sputnik) — The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) carried out a government-mandated study which revealed that 57 million citizens are dependent on alcohol in India, while some 850,000 people consume illicit drugs, the ANI media agency reported.

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The study's findings were released by the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre (NDDTC), an agency functioning under the AIIMS umbrella.

The report, titled Magnitude of Substance Use in India, sheds light on substance abuse in the country, and warned that the use of psychoactive substances like cannabis, opium, heroin, cocaine, amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), sedatives, inhalants and hallucinogens has increased.

Researchers surveyed 200,111 households from 186 districts and a total of 473,569 people were interviewed.

Professor of psychiatry at the NDDTC, Dr. Atul Ambekar, said that heroin abuse has increased many fold, with a large number of addicts in India not undergoing any treatment.

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Some 10 medical colleges with 15 non-government organisations were involved in the survey led by the NDDTC, which began in 2017 and ended in October 2018. The previous nation-wide survey on drug abuse was conducted in 2000-2001, with the results published in 2004.