Shopian: Over 270 drug abuse patients were treated this year at Addiction Treatment Facility Shopian.
The information was revealed during an awareness program which was carried out by District Hospital Shopian’s Addiction Treatment Facility (ATF) at Government Degree College Shopian on Thursday.
The program was held as part of Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyan.
During the program, the speakers acquainted the students and teachers with the adverse impact of drug abuse on mental and physical health.
They said that the district was caught in the throes of substance abuse and there was an immediate need of keeping the scourge off the society.
The speakers also said that the patients linked to drug abuse must be treated like normal patients and prodded into seeking treatment.
On the sidelines of the programme, Dr Adil Farooq Mir , Medical Officer at ATF said that the facility had received more than 270 patients involved in drug abuse since the beginning of this year.
“We find that most of the addicts in the area use hard drugs like heroin”, he said.
Mir said that the objective of this programme was to raise awareness among the students about the adverse effects of drug abuse.
He said that the students were asked not to shy away from seeking the help of the facility in case any one of them or in their peer group was involved in the substance abuse. Besides the faculty of Degree College Shopian, Medical Superintendent , District Hospital Shopian Molvi Khalid Abbas was also present on the occasion.