Sahil Manzoor Bhatti
No society has ever lost a generation to drugs overnight. It happens slowly, and it happens in full view of neighbours, teachers and relatives who tell themselves that somebody else will step in. That habit of looking away has become our most dangerous one.
The world is fighting drug addiction on every front, and yet in our own neighbourhoods the conversation stops at the gate. We know what is happening. We know which boy has stopped going to school, which family has grown quiet, which corner has become a meeting point after dark. We stay silent because we have convinced ourselves that our own home is safe. It is not. No home is safe inside an unsafe street.
A peaceful society is not a luxury that arrives after everything else is settled. It is the ground on which education, work and family life stand. If that ground gives way, nothing built on it survives.
What should alarm us most is the age of those being drawn in. School-going children and young people in their teens and early twenties are being pulled into drug use, some directly, some through the company they keep. Addiction spreads like floodwater. It does not stop at one house, and it does not wait for us to finish arguing about whose responsibility it is. The time to build the embankment is before the water rises.
There is a reason this age group is the most exposed. Adolescence is a stage of rapid physical, emotional and hormonal change. The body grows faster than judgement does. Teenagers in this phase can be impatient, stubborn, rude or openly rebellious, and that is not a character defect, it is a stage. But a young person in that stage who is left without guidance will look for direction somewhere, and there is no shortage of people willing to offer the wrong kind.
What such a young person needs is not a lecture but presence: counselling, mentorship, honest conversation and someone who notices when something changes. Our society is not short of people who could provide this. We have teachers, doctors, sportspersons, scholars and professionals who have achieved a great deal and whose experience is going unused. Bringing them into schools, colleges and Panchayat halls costs very little and would change a great deal.
Families make this harder without meaning to. When a son is found using, the first instinct is often to hide it, because the family name feels more urgent than the boy. The matter is settled quietly at home, treatment is delayed, and by the time help is sought the problem has hardened. Shame is not a treatment. A family that speaks to a counsellor early has not failed, it has acted.
The government and the administration are making efforts to curb crime and drug use, and those efforts deserve acknowledgement. They are also, plainly, not enough on their own. Enforcement can remove a supplier. It cannot fill the empty afternoon that sent a boy looking for one. That part belongs to parents, teachers, schools, religious leaders, sports bodies and government departments pulling in the same direction rather than in parallel.
Filling that afternoon is where sport and physical training earn their place, and this is not a small suggestion. A young person who has somewhere to be at five in the evening, a target to chase and people who expect him to turn up has a structure around him that no campaign or poster can provide.
I write this from my own experience with bodybuilding and regular exercise. It gave me something to be disciplined about at an age when discipline is unfashionable. Training builds strength in muscle and bone. Combined with balanced eating, it helps manage body weight. It improves how a person carries himself, and confidence in your own body is a quiet protection against a great deal. It clears the head, it takes the edge off stress, and on the days when everything else felt heavy, an hour of hard training was the hour that made sense.
Gyms and fitness centres are now available in many of our towns, with modern equipment and trained instructors. That is an opportunity worth using properly. Work under a qualified trainer rather than by imitation, because poor technique injures muscle and bone. Eat plain, balanced food and drink enough water. Be suspicious of shortcuts: the supplement shelf sells promises that ordinary nutrition and patience deliver more honestly.
Access, however, is uneven. A boy in a town can walk to a gym. A boy in a far-off village often cannot, and he is no less at risk. The district administration should consider sports and fitness facilities at the Panchayat level, with playgrounds, basic equipment and a trained supervisor. A playground in a village costs far less than a de-addiction bed, and it arrives much earlier.
Every experience in a society teaches something, and we have had enough teaching. We have watched bright students lost and capable families broken. If those years are to mean anything, they should push us towards the young people still within reach.
So the appeal is simple, and it is addressed to my own friends first. Choose the field over the corner. Choose the gym, the classroom, the playground, the skill you have been putting off. Say it plainly to yourself: I want to be fit, healthy, clear-headed and free of drugs.
Let us protect this generation. Let us keep our streets worth walking. What we hand our children should be sport, health, education and a life they have no reason to escape from.
