MANGALORE: It seems to have become as easy as just dialling a number or sending an SMS to get drugs in Mangalore. It is this easy access which is making students addicted, informs psychologist Dr Ravish Tunga and physician Dr Hansraj Alva who between themselves see nearly 90 to 95 per cent of youth involved in drug abuse.Four years ago, Dr Ravish Tunga, director of Tunga Institute of Psychiatry and Counselling, had conducted a random survey of students in four professional and degree colleges to understand the prevalence of nicotine and drug abuse.The survey findings were alarming. “If nicotine prevalence was 1.5 per cent, drug abuse prevalence was from 0.3 to 0.4 per cent,” recollects Dr Tunga. He adds that with a four-fold increase in number of colleges, the prevalence of drug abuse would also have increased four-fold. Today two per cent of patients among the 125 who consult Dr Tunga daily are addicted to heroin and cannabis. What particularly saddens Dr Hansraj Alva of Vinaya Hospital is the increasing vulnerability of preadolescents to drug abuse.Underlining the gravity of drug abuse in Mangalore, experts point out that cases seen in clinics are just the tip of the iceberg. They come to us when complications arising from drug abuse spirals out of control, informs Dr Tunga and Dr Alva. Deaths from overdose have gone unnoticed.While lacunae in the social and support system kept growing, the drug cartel has been growing from strength to strength with every passing year. Dr Hansraj Alva highlighting its clout recollects how a conduit smuggled heroin to one of his patients undergoing detoxification in the hospital.Dr Tuna says the only way to wipe out drug cartel is to reduce its demand by orienting the adolescent population to ‘say no to drugs.’
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