The drugs under-culture

There is a culture of recreational drug use in every country in the world. There are no exceptions. Drugs and young people have always had an unhappy relationship, and the drug culture in Pakistan is now seen to be evolving with social media playing a key part in that evolution. A recent report speaks of the police in Darakhshan, Karachi, making a series of arrests as the result of a tip-off from an informer who had penetrated a drugs distribution network that used Facebook as its primary vehicle.

The methodology was simple. Set up a Facebook page advertising a social event which required payment of anywhere between Rs5,000 and Rs15,000 to gain both access and the location; and then offer drugs to those that paid the fee. There were eight members of the group that the police caught on this occasion, all of them young, all from relatively well-off families and all educated. In addition to distribution at events they offered delivery to the doorstep, a sophisticated and profitable business. Somebody somewhere is either importing or manufacturing the drugs these new-age dealers sell and the market, given the expanding middle class, is limitless.

It would be naive to assume that these arrests have done much to dent what is in all likelihood a national phenomenon. If it can happen in Karachi then it can happen in Islamabad or Lahore or any other city where relatively affluent young people starved of virtually every legal recreational opportunity are going to fall head over heels for this latest activity. No country anywhere in the world has successfully eradicated a youth drug culture. None. Ever. But some have made successful harm-reduction interventions. Pakistan now sits on the cusp of a nascent expansion of recreational drug use that it is completely unprepared for. We await developments.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2017.

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