CHENNAI: Drug abuse was at its peak on Chennai’s college campuses in the 1980s. “That has changed. Not many of today’s students have taken to the habit,” claims an official of the Narcotic Intelligence Bureau (NIB). Agreed, quite a few school children and college students living in the slums and bylanes —where peddlers operate — do drugs, but there is no big jump in numbers, claim officials. A NIB official claims that there is ‘zero prevalence’ in the city colleges, if you leave out some stray cases of students who picked up the habit from seniors. However, among the lower income strata, use of ganja and even hard drugs like brown sugar has not yet been weeded out.Authorities have been cracking down on drug lords and smugglers, and brown sugar has become scarce in the Chennai in the last six years, say police sources. In fact, shortage of such hard drugs has led to many addicts switching over to ganja, which somehow manages to find its way to the market - despite police and forest officials destroying plantations in the hills of Tamil Nadu and completely stopping its transportation to the plains. Ganja is available in little packets priced at `100, which shoots up at times of high demand. Regular users continue to get their supply without trouble. Today’s youngsters find the accessories to roll joints in leading stores in the city as cigarette paper and loose tobacco can be picked off the shelves of some supermarkets. Paper and tobacco were once imported by the Indian government and supplied only for defence personnel, but are now sold freely.A narcotic similar to ganja is hashish and hashish oil. Hashish is a resin while the oil has a high concentration of the mind-altering compound THC; hashish oil is not easily available as it is mostly exported or supplied to the wealthy. Premium drugs escape detection during checks as awareness is low even among low-rung NIB officials. For instance, a hashish stick resembles the lead in pencils, though it is deep brown, not black. A constable searching for contraband may find it difficult to identify. Hashish, priced at `900 a stick, is either mixed with tobacco and smoked, or baked into food. ‘Blotting Paper’ perforated with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) looks like filter paper used in chemistry labs. Only drug experts and LSD users can tell the difference.
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