I byen Dharan, en af Nepals største, er stofmisbrug blandt børn udbredt. Det anslås, at over halvdelen af ungdomsgenerationen i byen tager stoffer samtidig med, at tilbuddene om rehabilitering er uhyre få.
Forældrene er i udlandet for at tjene penge – som børnene så køber stoffer for.
DHARAN, 27 September 2011 (IRIN): Child drug users in one of Nepal’s largest cities, Dharan, near the border with India, lack access to proper rehabilitation and social services, and those from lower caste families are especially vulnerable.
“More than 50 percent of youth [in Dharan] are involved in drug use,” said Rajendra Bista, deputy superintendent of police in Dharan. “Most of their parents are abroad working, so the children are not given proper guidance, but they get a lot of money. Misguidance leads them to drug addiction.”
In contrast with other Nepalese cities, Dharan boasts well-maintained roads and good infrastructure, thanks to remittances sent home by Nepalis working abroad.
In the absence of decent social services, however, particularly for low-income and lower caste families, some parents have resorted to drastic measures to restrain their children. For Durga Bishwakarma, chaining her 10-year-old, drug-abusing son, Nagendra, to the family bed was her only option.
“While I was at work or asleep at night, he would run away. I would pay one of the street kids to find him and pay another child and another until I had no money left to give,” Durga told IRIN.
Durga and her family are Dalits, a marginalized caste in South Asia, and live in a single room off the squatter tenements in Dharan.
According to a 2006 survey by the Nepal Central Bureau of Statistics, 53 percent of hard drug users are aged 15-24 in Nepal. Buprenorphine, in the form of Tidigesic (an injecting painkiller illegal in Nepal) and considered a hard drug, is popular in Dharan, and available for as little as 3 US dollar (16-17 DKR).
Dharan’s proximity to the Nepal-India border eases drug-trafficking.
The last published local drug statistics for Dharan are a decade old and indicated that 5.000 of the city’s 68.000 people were using drugs.
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