Bhopal: Rampant drug abuse by children living at Bhopal railway station is an unfortunate known fact; however, these kids have now fallen for something rotten, which is not only easily available but also comes without a cost.
A recent study has revealed that children dwelling at Bhopal railway station have come up with a novel drug to get high – lizards- dried and crushed. The shocking revelation came into light in a study on these children by child rights organisation named Awaaz Samiti. Around 19 children were found taking drug by drying up common house lizards found on the railway station premises and then crushing them to smoke it along with tobacco. Almost all the children were found to be in an age group of 12-16 years.
“It is a strange new drug abuse by the children living at the railway station. On a visit to the place where these children reside, one can come across dead lizards being dried up on tin sheets on the ceiling,” said Prashant Dubey of Awaaz Samiti while speaking to Free Press. While speaking to children about their addiction to lizard, it has come to fore that it was more of a psychological thing for them rather than a mere new drug, he added.
“By smoking dried and crushed lizard with tobacco, they feel that they have achieved something big. They feel elated that they smoke dried lizards, which for them is a big thing as not everybody has the courage to do so. It was also found that kids enter into this drug abuse mainly due to peer pressure and desire to try something new. The ones who are addicted to it often ask the non-abusers that have they tried it, if not that they are definitely missing something big. This ultimately drives the non-abusers to try it and then ultimately get hooked to it,” said Dubey adding that the experts believe that as there are no poisonous lizards found in the state, the health effects are limited and are not grave.
However, Dr Bhushan Singh who runs a centre for drug de-addiction and psyciatric treatment, PRAYAS, is of different opinion. Talking to FP he said that smoking dried lizards have some grave health hazards on the children. It has many have serious health implications as the abuse tends to affect children central nervous system, immune system and of course their respiratory system,” said Singh. He added, the abusers believe that the lizards have some small amount of poison which can provide pleasure if consumed in drugs.
“Around two years ago, a similar case of a 14-year-old boy had come to me. He was addicted to this lizard drug abuse and he used to draw immense pleasure by smoking dried lizard with tobacco,” the doctor said.
“Though there are not many poisonous lizards in the state but the house lizards which the children are abusing for drugs, have some quantity of poison. They believe that its head have the maximum amount of poison so they just cut it off and dry the remaining body to smoke it with tobacco. These
children thought of the snake for the same purpose but they thought that snake’s poison is more deadly as a result they moved towards house lizard which is easily available,” he said adding that in order to bring them out of this grip the administration should educate them and admit them to de-toxification courses.
On the issue of drug rehabilitation centres for children, Dubey said that at present it is not possible because there is no such centre for the children in the state.
“When we took up the matter with the officials of Children Welfare Committee, they said that
they don’t have any such facility. Any when they find such children they only send them to the shelter homes which also don’t have any such facility for them. So in the nut shell, it is almost impossible to bring them out of this drug abuse because of the lack of required facilities added with their lack of will power to come out of this practice,” said Dubey.
