When Sundar Rai returned back to Dharan from Hong Kong he had already become a full drug addict.

His father who is a retired British Gurkha Army soldier had done everything possible that could keep his only son happy. But Sundar was always on the look out for drugs and one could find him always under the influence of drugs. His parents tried everything to bring him back to normal life and one thing they thought would change his life was marriage. They married him to a girl from Bhojpur thinking that responsibility of looking after his wife would have some affect on him, but that too proved futile.

Sundar is presently undergoing treatment at a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts in Dharan and is doing his best to change himself. Sundar is one of the 6000 drug addicts in Dharan who is trying to leave the bad habit and join the social mainstream. The actual situation of drug addicts in Dharan is quite alarming.

It took just six months for Chandra to become a ‘respected’ addict among his friends after he learnt to smoke in the company of his ‘experienced’ friends. It was only after Police arrested Chandra while transporting illegal drugs from across the border that his parents came to know that their son was a drug addict.

Seven years have passed after Dharan was recognized as the third town after Kathmandu and Pokhara with the highest number of drug addicts. Dharan is slowly developing itself as the model town of the country in term of the development construction works but the number of drug abusers in Dharan has not decreased, it is still on the rise. A statistic shows that the number of drug addicts increased by 1000 last year.

We all have to be every sensitive in order to check this rate of growth, says Bijaya Subba, Program Manager of the Rehabilitation Centre run by Kirat Yakthung Chumlung. A survey carried out by the Centre last year found the number of drug addicts in Dharan as 5,000. Of them five per cent were found to be women and 85 per cent were between 14 to 30 years of age.

The survey also found that majority of them had begun taking drugs just for fun and very few took up the bad habit due to family tension or other reasons. Owing to short-lived enjoyment and company of friends, around 15 percent of school-going boys and two percent girls in Dharan are found to be addicted to some kind of ‘drug abuse’.

A Police Inspector based in Dharan feels that there are two reasons behind the increasing number of drug abusers in Dharan—excessive freedom and excessive ‘pocket money’.

Various other social and psychological problems like circle of friends, lust for enjoyment, quarrels inside the family, problem of unemployment as well as problem of social adjustment has also been attributed to the increasing number of drug addicts in Dharan.

Tedigesic injection is found to have been the most widely used drugs among the drug addicts in Dharan followed by nitrogen tablets, phensydil and also the sticking gum-dendrite.

Heroine, which is a very expensive form of illegal drugs, was also found to have been used by the drug absuers in Dharan.

“I arrested four people on the charge of heroine consumption but I was not sure whether it was genuine. Later I found that it was real”, adds the Inspector.

HIV/AIDS is another thing that is a matter of concern more Rehabilitation Centres in Dharan. Some 78 percent of the drug addicts in Dharan are believed to be carrying the HIV virus and some have been detected with Hepatitis ‘C’ and ‘B’.

Inspector Upreti feels that the problem could be minimized only when the parent become aware of this. The open Indo-Nepal border also has been a contributing factor.

Bijaya Subba of the Rehabilitation Centre feels that the government should not classigfy the drug addicts as criminals but bring out a clear-cut policy for their rehabilitation and re-integration into the society.