Aizawl: Drug related deaths that witnessed considerable decline since 2004 appears to be on an upward trend again during the last one or two years.
According to Aizawl Civil Hospital records, as many as 158 youths have been admitted to the hospital from November 2012 till date of which 16 died due to drug overdose.
The highest death rates during the last seven months were recorded during post-Christmas and New Year festival. Even though drug overdose cases admitted to the hospital continued, the death rates declined, the source said, adding that there were no deaths in April and May.
Going by doctors’ comments, the increase in drug abuse is clearly a fallout of the controversial dry law that has been imposed in the Christian-majority Mizoram.
“Most of the victims are teens, who don’t have much money but who desperately want to get high. Most of the drugs they abused are over-the-counter drugs which they can get easily and at low cost. As they have to large quantity to get high, the drug have adverse and immediate effects on their health,” said a doctor who didn’t want to be named.
According to a doctor of the Aizawl civil hospital, addiction to cough syrups and other over-the-counter drugs has suddenly caught the fancy of adolescents in Aizawl.
The most commonly abused cough syrups, according to the doctor, are Coscopin D, Respira D, Norvent D, Instaryl D and Ascoril D, which contain dextramorphan hydromobide and chlorpheniramine malaete.
“Side effects include feelings of depression and sadness, dilated pupils, dissociation – trouble differentiating between what is real and what are hallucinations, panic attacks, psychotic episodes – particularly severe after prolonged over consumption of cough syrup,” the doctor said. “It is more dangerous when taken with grape wine,” he added.
According to the doctor, many teens in Aizawl have also abused pacitane (its slang name ‘pepe’) and cataspa, in their desperate attempt to get light skin. This he said was caused by the craze over the light-skinned Korean celebrities.
“Prolong use of these drugs make them pale that make them believe that they get lighter complexion. This is more common among girls,” the doctor said.
The doctor said that many drug stores in Aizawl which have restricted licences sold these drugs, which are prohibited without doctor prescription.
Last year recorded 38 cases of drug related deaths, according to Mizoram excise and narcotics department.
Thirty-five youths died due spasmo proxyvon and one other due to spasmo proxyvon and nitrosun while heroin, the commonest cause of drug related deaths across the world, killed only two persons in Mizoram during 2012. Four of these were women, the records said.
With this, drugs, mainly painkiller spasmo proxyvon, has claimed the lives of 1,234 people in Mizoram, including 125 women, since 1984 when the first case of drug related death was recorded.
Of the 1,234 death only 87 were caused by heroin.
The first drug-related death was recorded in Mizoram in 1984 when a person died of heroin overdose. The number kept increasing till 2004 when the state’s largest and most influential organisation Young Mizo Association embarked on anti-drug campaign.
From 1984 to 1990, 24 people, including one woman, most of them from well-to-do families, lost their lives to heroin. According to the official records, the first death due to abuse of spasmo proxyvon was detected in 1991 and the number increased year by year touching 1,184 till December 31, 2010.
While heroin is smuggled from Myanmar, pharmaceautical drugs come from the neighbouring states, mainly Assam, police officials said.
These are official records and the actual number could be much higher as there were drug-related deaths in remote areas and even in Aizawl that went unrecorded, said a social activist working for drug addicts. (UNI)