Addiction To Drugs And Alcohol

One of the great evils that is seen in our societyis addiction to drugs and alcohol. It has resulted in the ruin of many people’s lives. Many poor people waste their hard earned money on liquor, which is injurious to their health. Mahatma Gandhi was deadly against this practice. He tried hard to root out this. But the evil is still prevalent in our society.

Addiction to drugs and alcohol has become a global problem nowadays. Today every country in the world is badly affected by the menace of drugs abuse. Drugs taken for medical purposes are not bad. People have been taking such drugs since time immemorial to make cure of their diseases. But these days drugs and narcotics are being used freely by the people all over the world. The abuse of narcotics has caused widespread concern to all the nations of the world. Drugs like hashish, brown sugar, and smack are being widely sold, particularly to young people and even children. Smugglers and drug peddlers make a lot of money out of thus trade and for this reason they try to get more and more people addicted to drugs.

If we peep into the reasons of this malpractice, we will find that there are scores of factors which lead our children to drug addiction. In our country, young students, in order to become modern and to keep pace with the western youth, start to take drugs. Sometimes these young students take drugs to overcome frustration in life. There are also children who are fed up with their parents because their parents often quarrel at home. To divert their mind, such children often find relief in drugs and alcohol.

The reasons may be baseless or genuine, but this evil practice must not go on. Drugs are not only harmful to health but have lead to the spread of serious diseases like AIDS through the use of contaminated syringes. It is very hard to cure drug addicts who ruin their families by spending all their money on this habit. They even commit crimes ti obtain money for the purpose.

Our government is very concerned about this problem. It has taken several steps to check the abuse of drugs and provide medical treatment for the addicts. Many kinds of treatments like ‘Aversion Treatment’, ‘Logotherapy’, ‘Group Therapy’ etc. are given to them. Many voluntary agencies are also doing a lot of work to help alcoholics and drugs addicts to give up these habits. But social awareness is far more important in this regard. We must adopt kind and sympathetic attitude towards addicts. We must arouse a strong will power in them so that they may find it easy to give up their bad habit. However, the government also needs to take stern measures against those who deal in illegal distribution of liquor and drugs.