The 100-day drug campaign counted FIRs, arrests and seizures. Nobody counted the cannabis standing untouched along the roads to Doodhpathri, Charar-i-Sharief and Pahalgam.
Wild cannabis is once again standing shoulder-high along some of Kashmir’s most travelled roads. On the stretch leading to Doodhpathri, along the Charar-i-Sharief route, from Marhama towards Pahalgam, and on the roads from Mangam towards Watshi and Lasi Pora, the plant grows thick on both sides, in full public view, through a tourist season.
The contrast with what the administration has just finished celebrating is hard to miss. The Nasha Mukt Jammu and Kashmir Abhiyan ran from April 11 to July 21 this year and closed with an impressive scoreboard: 2,027 FIRs under anti-narcotics laws, 2,301 arrests, more than 1,300 kilograms of narcotics seized, properties worth about Rs 139 crore attached, action against 254 chemist shops, cancellation of 750 vehicle registrations, and a recommendation to impound 205 passports. Over 2.16 lakh awareness events were held, with participation claimed at more than one crore people. Five weeks after the closing ceremony, the cannabis on the Doodhpathri road is still there.
The gap matters because the underlying numbers are not improving. A reply tabled in the Rajya Sabha this month shows that the number of people treated for drug addiction in Jammu and Kashmir rose from 5,382 in 2021-22 to 46,491 in 2025-26, with 1,56,850 treated across five years. Against that caseload, the Union Territory has one Integrated Rehabilitation Centre for Addicts, three drop-in centres, six district de-addiction centres and 21 addiction treatment facilities. The 2018 national substance use survey put cannabis prevalence in J&K at 1.31 per cent, roughly 1.4 lakh users. Cannabis is not the deadliest substance in this valley. It is, for many young users, the first one.
There is also the question of consistency. Enforcement against cultivation has been genuinely aggressive. In April, Budgam police registered five NDPS cases in a single day, including one at Alamdar Colony in Charar-i-Sharief. In May, a poppy patch of about 1,600 square feet at Bangadpora Ichgam was destroyed and two FIRs registered. Anantnag police arrested 22 people for narcotic cultivation in a single week. In Bijbehara, a cannabis crop on private land drew an FIR under Section 8/20 of the NDPS Act. Across Doda and Samba, more than 53 kanals were cleared in one operation.
So the machinery exists, and it works when pointed at a named landowner. Wild growth on government land, road verges and common land has no name attached to it, and that appears to be the whole difficulty. Drives have been held: Baramulla, Hajin in Bandipora, Shopian, Ganderbal, Beerwah, and roadside patches at Thokerpora and Mirgund in Pulwama. What has not happened is a systematic sweep of the arterial roads that carry the most traffic.
The distinction between deliberate cultivation and self-seeded growth is legally real. It cannot become an administrative excuse. A cannabis plant on a road verge near a school gate is available to anyone with a bag, and its uninterrupted presence through a whole season teaches a lesson of its own about what the state notices and what it does not.
What is needed is not another campaign but the follow-up the last one earned. A mapped survey of roadside stretches by the Roads and Buildings Department, Rural Development, municipal bodies and Excise, working with police. Priority clearing near schools, residential clusters, tourist routes and highways. Two clearing cycles a year, timed before flowering. A named officer per stretch, with the survey and clearance figures published the way FIR counts were published. Residents and panchayats should be given a working number to report growth, and should use it.
Jammu and Kashmir has now demonstrated that it can arrest 2,301 people in 100 days. It should be able to clear a road verge. Otherwise the campaign will be remembered for its arithmetic, while the problem keeps growing by the roadside.
