For State Minister for Interior, Shahryar Afridi, it was just another day and just another function, but he must say something which should make it to front-pages and TV breaking news. And he did just that the other day – by claiming that 75 percent female and 45 percent male students in elite schools use drugs, particularly the crystal meth commonly called ICE. He was addressing a police function in Islamabad, and what he said was a bolt from the blue, both for the parents and the law enforcers. Of course, there were reports that a drug peddler was arrested at the gate of the Quaid-i-Azam University, and some more could be spotted at the entrances to a few other educational institutions. Since drug-use is deeply entrenched in Pakistan it was there in some schools, but not in numbers, the minister quoted. As to what was the minister’s source for this information, the capital’s police chief also wanted to know, for he had believed that not more than 2 percent students do drugs. The school managements are wonderstruck too. If as per the police estimation during the entire past year, only a kilogramme of ICE was confiscated how come then that it was available to thousands of students of school-going age. The minister’s figure appears to be wide off the mark. Even at a ‘notorious-for-drug use’ university in Lahore, only 16 percent students were hashish - also called weeds - users and only 4 percent were drug addicts, says a survey. No doubt then, what Shahryar Afridi had doled out is extremely worrying for parents. What made him think so and say it at a police function there is no clue – except some inkling that his scriptwriter might have consulted a three-year-old survey, which was discussed in the Senate also, and rejected by school managements across the country.

But that said, there are two questions that beg frank and honest answers, both from the government and the survey conductors. The reality is that while the official statistics are quite often misleading, the surveys by NGOs and others are merely guesswork. Is it true that students, both male and female, often get addicted to ICE and heroin? And how is it then that the police chief puts the figure of the addicted students at not more than 2 percent – while the survey by an NGO insists that nearly half of the student population in elite schools is of drug addicts. To this disparity, there is the broader face – how credible are the public opinion surveys in Pakistan, especially when these are based on sample size that is comparatively very small. However, the fact cannot be denied that our country is not only the prime route for outflow of narcotics produced in Afghanistan but also a major drug consumption market. And there is this massive unchecked import of manufactured drugs. Resultantly, it poses a formidable challenge to have drug-free streets and schools. In neighbouring Afghanistan, democracy may or may not come, but its opium production is continuously rising – paradoxically, it’s the war that has lent the thrust for increased production. And, strangely, while the poppy fields had substantially shrunk during the Taliban rule these have grown with foreign troops in Afghanistan. Since the outflow of Afghan narcotics is becoming difficult by the day, its use in Pakistan is on the rise. Visit any graveyard or the banks of a foul-smelling drain, you will find scores of addicts, some creating the dragons and others having compulsive naps. In Pakistan, if there is a government-run rehabilitation center, one would like to know. There are some facilities set up by the private sector, but these are too ill equipped and inadequate to treat hard drug addicts, whose number runs into tens of thousands in Pakistan. Given ineffective interdiction at the western border and crass government failure on this front, the ball is in the parents’ court. Here the minister is spot on when he expects parents to recognise the symptoms of addiction in their children. Given their tender age and the kind of pressure they undergo during exams and a few other such encounters, the parents and the elders in the family must keep a closer watch on whom they meet after the school and how do they spend their pocket money. Addiction can be cured in its early stages, but not when it is deeply entrenched in the body.