The Shadow Pandemic: Understanding Kashmir’s Drug Crisis By Javid Amin | May 12, 2025 Eighty-two kilometers from Srinagar, nestled among the majestic Himalayan foothills, 23-year-old Javaid (name changed) sits in a small rehabilitation center. His sunken eyes and trembling hands tell a story that has become increasingly common across the Kashmir Valley. Three years ago, he was a promising engineering student. Today, he’s fighting a desperate battle against heroin addiction. “It started with charas (cannabis),” he recalls, his voice barely audible. “Then pills, and finally, heroin. Before I knew it,…
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Kashmir’s Silent Plague: Battling the Scourge of Drug Addiction
By: Mudasir Wani Kashmir valley, renowned for its beauty and culture, has recently been cast into the shadows by a growing epidemic – drug addiction. This ominous presence is unraveling the social fabric and dragging the valley into a bleak abyss. The Pandora’s box of this crisis is wide open. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment recently revealed in the Lok Sabha that nearly 10 lakh people in Jammu and Kashmir are entangled in the clutches of drug addiction. To put this into perspective, the population of Jammu and…
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