Video: 70% Of Punjab Youth On Drugs

Punjab’s reluctance to treat the drug situation as a full-blown crisis is partly because the state government itself is dependent on revenue from alcohol sales. Roughly 8,000 government liquor stores operate in Punjab, charging a tax on every bottle — an excise that represents one of the government’s largest sources of revenue. India’s comptroller found that liquor consumption per person in Punjab rose 59 percent between 2005 and 2010.

“We are promoting addiction in our state,” said Dr. Manjit Singh Randhawa, the city of Amritsar’s civil surgeon, a job akin to chief medical officer. “I’m getting calls from people saying they have lost their children, they have lost their breadwinners. In every village, people are falling prey to this drug abuse.”

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