Marijuana: Indian scenario

Short Communication

Marijuana smoking culture in Indian youth has increased rapidly in the last decade and mostly the growth has been observed in urban population of the youth. It is strange because smoking marijuana a.k.a “ganja” once considered a practice done by poor and illiterate people or by sadhus and fakir, it is strange because the same youth which labeled marijuana as a drug habit of poor people are doing it and advocating its use in spite of being well educated and coming from respected families. We can observe that a large college going students are into this habit without being aware of its addictive nature and long term effects. This change happened gradually over last decade.

According to the observations and research of few of the leading rehabilitation and deaddiction center of Central India.

One of the several reasons is the influence of the movies and music artists from the western countries on Indian youth or in other words the problem lies in the perception of Indian youth of how they watch them. From ‘Harold and Kumar’ to ‘Pineapple Express’ and many more these movies have shown that by doing this people tend to do stupid stuff but for huge fraction of Indian youth which blindly imitates west this stupid thing had influenced them as fashion statement.

Another reason is that the responsible media agencies of the nation seems so apathetic about this issue that I do not recall a single show aired on television addressing this issue. Moreover some of our news channels might flash headline and pictures of a celebrity who is into smoking. As a result the youth also gets influenced to smoke marijuana.

The police in India, almost of every state have a very careless and soft attitude towards production and smuggling of marijuana. As a result the availability of marijuana to the suppliers and end user is hardly a problem. It is very common practice to blend marijuana with other chemical in order to make it more addictive. Sometimes ganja is also mixed with other impurities such as leaves etc. to increase the quantity. Marijuana is becoming so common in college campuses that one merely can ask someone about where to get hold of it like asking direction to a tea vendor. Again the problem lies within the Indian youth mindset towards the use of this drug.

This is considered as gateway to all drugs because once body of user start developing tolerance he/she will require more quantity to get the same rush and sometime they hunt for new drug.

There are many side effects of marijuana like short term memory problems, smelling or hearing things which are not present and sometimes even meeting or talking to people or things which don’t exists. This condition is known as psychosis and its treatment is very lengthy because the belief system of your brain is designed around that feeling which was not real. The condition of psychosis is prolonged even after the abstinence from the substance. There are many other problems associated with this like increased heart rate, sexual problems etc.

If someone who has trouble quitting this habit should immediately contact de-addiction centre and enquire about their programs. There are many NGO’s and institution working in India regarding this issue.

On a concluding note this problem is in the society that we live in and the simplest and most effective way to overcome this problem is to be aware and make others also aware about the ill effects of marijuana.

Source: www.shrigksdeaddiction.org

http://socialjustice.nic.in/writereaddata/UploadFile/Magnitude_Substance_Use_India_R EPORT.pdf