NEW DELHI, Aug. 20 -- Sr. BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Gulam Ali Khatana on Wednesday raised concern over the rising drug menace in Jammu and Kashmir during the Special Mention in Parliament, describing it as a crisis that was "consuming the youth and weakening society from within."
Khatana said an estimated 1.35 million people in the Union Territory-around 8% of the population-are victims of substance abuse, and pointed out that 90% of these users are young people between the ages of 17 and 33 years. The growing dependence on opioids, especially heroin, had created a serious health emergency, he said. "The situation is such that Hepatitis C prevalence among injecting drug users has reached nearly 20% due to shared needles," the MP inform...