A much bigger pain awaits if we do not pay attention now
In the Kashmir Valley, a quieter catastrophe than the one history prepared people to watch for is now unfolding — not through violence, but through addiction, moving steadily through families, hospitals, and the lives of young men. A two-month investigation by The Indian Express traced this crisis from Baramulla to Anantnag, finding overwhelmed treatment centers, strained institutions, and a top police official willing to say plainly what the data suggests: the drug menace has surpassed militancy as the region's gravest threat. It is the nature of such crises to grow invisible precisely because they become ordinary, and Kashmir now faces the difficult work of seeing clearly what has already become familiar.
- Kashmir's top police officer has named the drug crisis a greater threat than militancy — a declaration that reframes decades of regional anxiety around a new and quieter enemy.
- Hospitals are overwhelmed, detention centers are filling with young men, and addiction treatment systems are buckling under a scale they were never designed to absorb.
- The crisis moves without announcement — through schools, homes, and families — making it harder to mobilize the urgency that visible violence tends to command.
- Doctors, counselors, and police officers describe the feeling not of managing a problem but of watching a catastrophe that has already normalized itself.
- The path forward depends on whether the political and social attention being called for can be sustained long enough to match the depth of what has already taken root.
Across the Kashmir Valley, something is breaking — not loudly, but in the accumulated silences of hospitals past capacity, detention centers filling with young men, and homes learning to live with loss. Over two months, The Indian Express traveled the length of the valley, from Baramulla in the north to Anantnag in the south, speaking with addiction counselors, psychiatrists, police officers, and families watching someone slip away. What emerged was a portrait of a public health system in crisis and a social fabric under quiet, relentless strain.
The scale is difficult to absorb. Addiction is clogging emergency rooms, generating case files faster than institutions can process them, and leaving behind broken families and young lives derailed before they had a chance to begin. Dilbag Singh, Jammu and Kashmir's top police officer, offered a stark assessment: the drug menace is not merely comparable to militancy — it is a bigger threat. A much bigger pain awaits, he warned, if the region does not commit itself fully to facing this challenge now.
What distinguishes this crisis is precisely its invisibility. Militancy announces itself. Addiction moves quietly — through schools, through households, through the young men who should be building futures. The investigation did not arrive with easy answers. It arrived with documentation: the unprecedented scale of what is happening, the way it has overwhelmed every system designed to contain it, and the voices of the people living inside it. Whether the attention Singh called for will materialize into a comprehensive response remains the open question. For now, the hospitals remain full, the detention centers remain full, and the families continue to wait.
Across the Kashmir Valley, something is breaking. Not visibly, not all at once—but in the quiet spaces of hospitals and clinics, in the paperwork piling up at police stations, in the detention centers filling with young men, and in the homes where families are learning to live with absence and fear. A drug addiction crisis is moving through the region with the force of something that has already become normal, already become inevitable.
The Indian Express spent two months traveling the length of the valley—from Baramulla in the north to Anantnag in the south, through Kupwara and into Srinagar—talking to the people who see it firsthand. Addiction treatment centers. Hospitals stretched past capacity. Families who have lost someone or are watching someone slip away. Doctors and psychiatrists and counselors who are trying to hold back a tide. Police officers and bureaucrats who understand they are losing ground.
What emerged from those conversations was a picture of a public health system in crisis and a social fabric under strain. The addiction is clogging the hospitals. It is filling the detention centers. It is generating case after case, filing after filing. It is leaving behind it a trail of broken families and young lives derailed before they had a chance to begin.
Dilbag Singh, the top police officer in Jammu and Kashmir, said something stark in an interview with the newspaper: the drug menace facing the society right now is a bigger threat than militancy. Not equal to it. Bigger. A much bigger pain awaits, he said, if the region does not pay attention now and commit itself fully to facing this challenge. Those are not the words of someone managing a problem. They are the words of someone watching a catastrophe unfold.
What makes this crisis different from others is its invisibility and its scale. Militancy is visible. It announces itself. This moves quietly through families, through schools, through the young men who should be building lives. It fills detention centers. It clogs emergency rooms. It generates paperwork and statistics and case files. And it leaves behind it people—thousands of them—whose lives have been fundamentally altered.
The investigation did not offer easy answers or simple solutions. What it did was document the scope of what is happening: the unprecedented scale of addiction across the valley, the way it has overwhelmed the systems designed to contain it, the way it has reached into every corner of the region. It is a story about a place in crisis, told through the voices of the people living inside that crisis.
What happens next will depend on whether the attention Singh called for actually materializes—whether the region commits itself to the kind of comprehensive response this moment demands. For now, the crisis continues. The hospitals remain full. The detention centers remain full. The families continue to wait.
Citas Notables
The drug menace that society currently faces is a bigger threat than militancy, and a much bigger pain awaits us if we do not pay attention and go all out to face the drug challenge today.— Dilbag Singh, Director General of Police, Jammu and Kashmir
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
When you say the drug crisis is bigger than militancy, what does that actually mean on the ground?
It means the damage is happening faster and reaching deeper. Militancy was a threat you could see coming. This moves through families quietly. A young man starts using, then another, then another. Suddenly a detention center is full of people in their twenties.
But why now? Why has this become a crisis in the last few years?
That's the question no one has a clean answer to. The investigation found it everywhere—from the smallest towns to the capital. It's not new, but the scale is. Something has shifted.
What did the families tell you?
They talked about loss. About watching someone change. About not knowing how to help. About the shame and the fear. These aren't abstract problems—they're happening in real homes.
And the hospitals?
They're overwhelmed. Addiction treatment centers are full. Emergency rooms are dealing with overdoses and complications. The system wasn't built for this volume.
What would it take to actually address this?
According to the police chief, it would take the kind of commitment and resources the region gave to fighting militancy. Full attention. All hands. That hasn't happened yet.