Kashmir needs a recovery revolution, not just a publicity campaign
Shahid Tariq Lone
Key Statistics at a Glance
- 5 lakh drug users in J&K (2023)
- 72% HCV-positive among heroin users
- 1,68,700 children (10–17) involved in drug use
- 500% rise in heroin seizures (2018–22)
- ₹2,152 crore liquor revenue in two years
- Only 2 public rehab centres in all of Kashmir
- Zero active NA chapters in the Valley
Every twelve minutes, someone in Srinagar is rushed to a hospital for a drug-related emergency. Kashmir has overtaken Punjab as India’s most drug-affected region. An estimated 13.5 lakh people of J&K’s population are now drug users, and 90 per cent of them in the Valley are hooked on heroin. Among children between 10 and 17, the number stands at 1,68,700. These are not abstract figures. They are our families.
Against this scale of crisis, the government’s primary response has been the Nasha Mukt Jammu Kashmir Abhiyan; awareness marches, college campaigns, slogans. The intention is right. The effort is inadequate.
“A campaign can raise awareness. Only a real policy built on compassion and sustained commitment can rebuild a life.”
The infrastructure does not match the problem
The numbers are telling. Over 5.34 lakh men and 8,000 women in J&K are trapped in opioid addiction. In 2022 alone, 41,110 addicts sought treatment, nearly double the 23,403 who sought help the year before. IMHANS (Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Srinagar) registers 150 new cases every day. Seventy-two per cent of heroin users test positive for Hepatitis C. Heroin seizures rose more than fivefold between 2018 and 2022, from 15 kg to 80 kg.
The government has set up Addiction Treatment Facility Centres in every district and channelled ₹5.45 crore to 32 de-addiction centres between 2021 and 2024. But the entire Kashmir Valley still has only two public rehabilitation centres: IMHANS and one run by the police. There is not a single dedicated rehab centre for women anywhere in J&K. A territory with 13.5 lakh drug users and two rehab centres is not fighting a crisis. It is acknowledging one.
Punish the peddler – heal the addict
In April 2026, J&K’s Lieutenant Governor launched a 100-day campaign directing authorities to confiscate assets, cancel passports, and freeze Aadhaar services of those involved in drugs. Going after traffickers and peddlers is not just justified, it is necessary. But when punitive measures are applied to addicts themselves, the policy crosses a line.
Attaching properties, threatening documentation, and criminalising addiction do not cure it. It drives it underground. It silences the son who might otherwise ask his family for help. It stigmatises the daughter whose family will now hide her illness rather than seek treatment, fearing social exposure and legal consequences. As Waheed-Ur-Rehman, a J&K legislator, correctly noted, the issue of drug addiction requires more than punitive participation: ‘Mere statements would not help. There needs to be a policy for de-addiction and rehabilitation.’
There must be punishment, yes, but the emphasis must clearly be on treatment and behavioural recovery rather than on the cancellation of citizenship or the confiscation of users’ assets. We need to push the addict towards a hospital bed, not a prison cell.
The root is conflict, unemployment, and broken homes
Addiction rarely begins with a needle. It begins with a reason. Research consistently identifies the same root causes in Kashmir: decades of armed conflict, mass unemployment, fractured families, and the complete absence of psychological support. A young man who grew up watching violence outside his window, who graduated into a job market that had no place for him, did not choose this path. His environment narrowed it down to almost nothing else.
The 2019 security lockdown following the abrogation of Article 370 worsened the mental health of an already traumatised population. Months of communication blackout, political uncertainty, and mass arrests fractured families and deepened collective anxiety. Research published in Al Jazeera’s investigation into Kashmiri women’s addiction found direct links between the 2019 events and a dramatic spike in substance use. The government cannot simultaneously create the conditions that produce addiction and then build statues of sobriety in the same landscape.
Any honest anti-addiction policy for Kashmir must include: meaningful youth employment programmes; accessible mental health services in every district, not just in Srinagar; a social fabric repair initiative that brings back trust, community, and purpose; and a recognition that peace of mind precedes peace from drugs.
What is missing: a recovery culture
There is a concept that exists in every corner of the world where addiction has been meaningfully addressed, and it is almost absent from Kashmir. It is called recovery culture: the idea that sobriety is not merely the absence of drugs, but the presence of community, accountability, meaning, and mutual support.
Programmes like Narcotics Anonymous (NA) have worked across the world, and even parts of urban India, precisely because they cost nothing and require no government machinery. NA is a peer-led fellowship built on the 12-step model; a structured programme where recovering addicts meet regularly, share honestly, hold each other accountable, and help newcomers do the same. It begins with admitting powerlessness over addiction and moves through personal inventory, making amends, and committing to support others in recovery. For a deeply spiritual society like Kashmir, its acknowledgement of a higher power in the healing process is not unfamiliar; it aligns naturally with faith. And yet, there is not a single active NA chapter in the Kashmir Valley.
Beyond NA, secular digital platforms that have transformed addiction care globally, like SMART Recovery (Self-Management and Recovery Training), which uses cognitive-behavioural techniques and LifeRing Secular Recovery offer community-based support online, accessible even from remote areas. Neither has any meaningful presence here. This is an inexcusable gap for a generation that lives on smartphones but has no digital bridge to recovery.
The addiction nobody talks about: alcohol and gambling
The government’s anti-drug campaign targets narcotics, heroin, opioids, and cannabis while conspicuously ignoring two addictions that are quietly ravaging Kashmiri households: alcohol and gambling.
This silence on alcohol is especially difficult to accept given what the numbers show. In the last two financial years, J&K earned approximately ₹2,152 crore from liquor shop auctions. Srinagar’s liquor revenue grew year-on-year. The Excise Policy 2025-26 invited bids for new liquor shops in tourist spots like Pahalgam, Gulmarg, Sonamarg, and districts like Baramulla and Kupwara. Multiple legislators, including those from the ruling National Conference and the BJP, have moved private member bills demanding a liquor ban. PDP, Congress allies, and traders at Lal Chowk have protested. The demand is not fringe. It is moral consensus being overridden by revenue calculations.
You cannot run a Nasha Mukt campaign while simultaneously growing an alcohol economy. That is not an anti-addiction policy; it is a selective prohibition driven by fiscal interest. Alcohol and gambling addiction must be included in any comprehensive treatment framework, with the same urgency given to heroin.
“You cannot fund a de-addiction campaign from the same treasury that profits from selling addiction. That is not governance, it is a contradiction.”
What a Real Policy Would Look Like?
This is not a call for despair. It is a call for a real policy- a demand for the comprehensive, humane, and evidence-based addiction policy that Kashmir’s people deserve and its government has so far failed to provide. Here is what such a policy must contain:
Dedicated rehabilitation centres in every district- Not just OPD clinics with a nurse and a doctor, but full inpatient facilities with psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, and social workers, with at least one centre exclusively for women.
A harm reduction framework- Needle exchange programmes and Opioid Substitution Therapy (Buprenorphine/Naloxone) must be expanded and destigmatised, not just stocked in hospitals that addicts are afraid to enter.
Push addicts toward treatment, not a prison cell- Divert users from the criminal justice system into recovery programmes. Reserve the law’s full force for traffickers.
Establish NA chapters and peer recovery networks- In mosques, community halls, schools, and online. Recovering addicts are the most powerful rehabilitation resource available, and they are free.
Make digital recovery platforms accessible- SMART Recovery and LifeRing adapted in Kashmiri and Urdu, backed by a government digital outreach initiative.
Address the addiction ecosystem honestly- Stop treating alcohol and gambling as invisible. Selective anti-drug campaigns that protect revenue streams are not public health; they are theatre.
Create the conditions where addiction is less likely to begin- Employment, mental health support, community rebuilding, and political stability. These are not soft issues. They are the foundation.
Conclusion: Compassion Is Not Weakness
Kashmir’s young people did not create this crisis. They inherited it from decades of conflict, from a broken social contract, from unemployment that suffocates ambition before it can breathe, from a political establishment that has alternately exploited and neglected them. The addict sitting in a ward at IMHANS today is not a criminal. He is a casualty of a society that has been under enormous pressure for decades and has received very little in return.
The Nasha Mukt Abhiyan is a beginning, but a beginning that never grows into policy eventually becomes a formality. Kashmir does not need more padyatras. It needs rehabilitation centres that stay open, NA meetings in neighbourhoods, jobs that give the recovered addict a reason to stay clean, and a government honest enough to acknowledge that you cannot fight one addiction while profiting from another.
The Valley has suffered enough. It is time to move from slogans to structures, from campaigns to care.
The writer is the founder of Valley Bazaar (www.valleybazaar.in)
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