RECENTLY while I was walking along the flood water channel at Phase VII, Hayatabad, Peshawar, I saw some of my classmates smoking cannabis sativa (locally known as chars). As we are high school students, their ages must be 16 or 17 years.

Although smoking such banned substances is punishable by law, they didn’t seem worried about it. Another thing that amazed me was the Phase VII police station, which was on the backside, hardly about 200 metres from the spot.

This raised a few questions in my mind. Are the police unaware of them? Why are these kinds of things allowed to spread? How are such drugs smuggled throughout the country?

If a student can easily reach a dealer of this stuff, why can’t the police or anti-narcotics officials? This is all because of dishonesty and lack of will on the part of government officials. But what if their own sons and relatives are addicted to such drugs? Will they even then not take action against drugs peddlers and users?

Umar Farooq Orakzai

Peshawar

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2020