I Ahmad Wani
A few days ago, social media lit up with a grainy video: Drug Department officers sealing a small medical shop in some corner of the valley. The crime? Three boxes of Pregabalin capsules. Just three. No mountains of heroin, no truckloads of charas. Only a few packets of a medicine most of us have seen on pharmacy shelves, prescribed for slipped discs and nerve pain. I stared at the screen, heart heavy, and picked up the phone.
My childhood friend Dr Mushtaq, a neurologist I trust with my life, answered on the first ring. “Pregabalin? It’s a godsend for patients writhing in pain from disc prolapse,” he said, voice steady as always. “It calms the screaming nerves, lets people walk again.” Then I called my contact in the Drug Department, an old schoolmate now knee-deep in raids. His words hit like cold water. “Bhai, that same capsule is the new high. Sedative effect. Kids pop ten, twenty at a go for a dopamine rush that lasts minutes and ruins lifetimes.”
I pressed him further. What’s the line? When does a chemist become a criminal? His answer chilled me: they watch shops in remote pockets where footfall is thin—paracetamol and pantoprazole fly off shelves elsewhere, but here, Pregabalin piles up. Low patients, high stock. Red flag. Raid.
I understood the logic, but something in me rebelled. Are we painting every corner chemist as a peddler? Can authorities seize a man’s livelihood, his shop, his dignity on suspicion alone? The drug menace is real, devastating, a monster eating our youth alive. Yet justice must wear a human face. No innocent should lose everything in the crossfire.
I have lived this nightmare up close. In our quiet neighbourhood, a young man—barely 30—slipped away one ordinary night. The talk of the town was his “librosar and Compose medicines,” swallowed like sweets for that fleeting pleasure. Ten tablets, twenty, chasing a high that dulled the ache of ordinary life. His family whispered of dopamine, of momentary escape. No one saw the warning signs until it was too late. The house fell silent. A mother’s eyes still carry that emptiness.
Then there was the father who came to me, voice cracking, begging me to pull strings—any strings—to get his only son arrested. “Jail will save him,” he pleaded. His wife turned on him in fury. How could a father say such a thing? Months later, the boy was gone. Overdose. At the condolence gathering, the mother collapsed into my arms. “If only you had listened to my husband… even jail would have kept him breathing. You shattered my last dream.” Her words still echo. I had suggested rehab. She had hoped for miracles. The drug won.
And then the story that broke every heart in our circle—the self-made billionaire from Anantnag, an illiterate giant who built an empire from nothing, known across the district for his grit. His only son, the heir to everything, fell to the same shadow. Same pills, same silent killer. The man who stared down every business storm crumbled at home. No amount of wealth could buy back that boy.
These are not distant headlines. These are our sons, our neighbours, our future. Kashmir has seen enough pain. For decades, stone pelting turned streets into battlegrounds. Hartals paralysed life. Hurriyat names haunted every conversation. Then came 2019, the abrogation, and a promise from the Lieutenant Governor. In 2020, Manoj Sinha looked the valley in the eye and vowed peace. Today, the streets are calm. Stone pelting feels like some old a folk tale. Hartals seem to be part of history books books. Families gather without fear. Shops stay open. Children play cricket where once tear gas lingered. That peace was hard-won, paid for in courage and resolve.
Now a new enemy has slipped through the cracks- drugs – caught hold of us more than 30 years ago, and we still are in its deathly grip.
Now medicine is being misused-Pregabalin, once a quiet saviour for slipped discs and neuropathic pain, has become the preferred poison. Doctors in Kashmir’s de-addiction centres are raising alarms. A recent study from one such centre, covering late 2024 to early 2025, found that among new patients, nearly 44 per cent named Pregabalin as their primary drug of abuse. Another 56 per cent mixed it with opioids, tramadol, codeine. Young men—18 to 35, mostly unemployed, mostly from rural areas—make up the vast majority. They crush the capsules, chase the sedative high, the anxiety relief that turns into chains. Polysubstance use is the norm. The government itself admitted to nearly 70,000 substance users in Kashmir, most of them youth. In 2025 alone, over 4,400 kilograms of narcotics were seized across J&K. Medical shops have been raided, licences suspended, couriers banned from carrying Pregabalin in places like Anantnag.
Punjab, our neighbour in suffering, reported seizures worth nearly six crore rupees in 2024. The Centre finally acted in January 2026, placing Pregabalin under Schedule H1—strict records, doctor details, patient details, three-year audits. No more casual sales. Yet the battle is far from over. The drug still flows through back doors, whispered prescriptions, desperate pharmacies scraping by in low-footfall areas.
I endorse, with every fibre of my being, the Honourable Lieutenant Governor’s latest initiative. Just days ago, on April 11, 2026, he stood at Maulana Azad Stadium in Jammu and flagged off the ‘Nasha Mukt Jammu Kashmir Abhiyaan’—a 100-day people’s movement. A padyatra. Community rallies. Six clear phases: awareness, youth engagement, enforcement, rehabilitation. He did not mince words. Target the big smugglers, not just street peddlers. Involve every citizen. Make it a mass resolve. “The future of our youth is at stake,” he said. This is not mere policy. This is a father’s urgency, a leader’s promise echoing the peace he delivered earlier. Streets that once echoed with slogans of unrest now echo with chants against addiction. The same administration that tamed terror is now turning its gaze to this invisible killer.
But here is where my heart pleads for caution. Enforcement must be sharp, yet compassionate. A chemist with three boxes and thin registers deserves scrutiny, not instant ruin. We cannot let zeal paint every struggling shopkeeper as a villain. The law must distinguish between the desperate seller feeding an addict’s craving and the genuine practitioner serving a patient doubled over in nerve pain. Raids based solely on “low patient flow, high Pregabalin stock” risk becoming tools of harassment in remote areas where legitimate business is already thin. Seizure of property, licence cancellation—these are heavy hammers. They must fall only when evidence is ironclad, not on suspicion alone.
We have seen what unchecked addiction does. It does not just kill the body; it hollows out families, shatters dreams, turns parents into mourners and siblings into ghosts. The dopamine lie—ten tablets for a moment’s bliss—has claimed too many. Our neighbour’s son, the Anantnag businessman’s heir, the 30-year-old who never woke up—they are not statistics. They are scars on our collective soul.
The way forward is clear, and it must be humane. Strengthen rehab centres—GMC Anantnag and others are doing good work, but we need more beds, more counsellors, more follow-up. Flood schools and colleges with honest conversations, not lectures. Train pharmacists to spot red flags without fear of false accusations. Reward chemists who keep impeccable records and report suspicious bulk buyers. Most importantly, listen to the mothers and fathers who have lost everything. Their grief is the truest compass.
Drug menace is more dangerous than anything we have faced before because it attacks from within—silent, seductive, sold in blister packs with doctor’s stamps. It preys on the same youth who once picked up stones in anger and now pick up pills in despair. Yet we have turned the tide before. We brought peace to the streets. We can bring life back to our homes.
Let the Nasha Mukt Abhiyaan succeed—not through fear alone, but through fierce love for our children. Let no innocent shopkeeper be crushed under the wheels of justice. But let no peddler, no matter how small, escape the net. Our social fabric is fraying. It is time—right time—to stitch it back with resolve, compassion, and unyielding courage.
The Honourable LG has lit the torch. Now every one of us—doctor, chemist, parent, neighbour—must carry it forward. For the boy who could have been saved by one more night in rehab. For the mother who still whispers her son’s name in empty rooms. For the valley that has known too much pain and deserves, at last, healing that lasts.
