The ongoing surge in police drives against the narcos across the country gives rise to a sarcasm in me, leading me to look historically back at the use and abuse of narcotic substances. We’re presently behaving as if the drug onslaught is a recent phenomenon and we Bengalis were always innocent as far as abuses were concerned. In fact, the drug addiction and inclination for tasting narcotic substances was always there among us.
When we were kids in the early 1970s, we saw many of our elders using various forms of drugs. We used to know about it when someone would pass away due to overdose of drug. As children, we used to hear that our elder brothers were using various injectable drugs such as pethidine and the like. They didn’t have any particular medical reason for applying those substances into their bodies. They just did it for getting high. Later, they used to get addicted to their high-ness. After years of overuse, most abusers had passed away, some survived.
However, interestingly, those who survived had left a lasting and emulating impact on us. We started thinking that those who use drugs were different kind people, nicer people, interesting people; they didn’t disturb the society; they used to inject pethidine or morphine into their bodies and went to a different level of consciousness.

We thought they were the happy bunch where as our fathers who day in and day out toiled for a living were the struggling commoners’ lot. But little did we know how they disturbed the entire gamut of the society; the drugs had been silently destroying the core of the society. But at that time, as children, we used to sympathise with them with a tinge of admiration.

It’s still unknown to us why we had such admirations for the pethidine survivors. May be their pathos seemed heroism to us – which we didn’t understand at all. We were in absolute darkness.

We slowly graduated to college from school. Our school and college were of hardships, ours was a residential school and college that compelled us to be physically tougher than the students of any other educational institutions of the country. Perhaps, the only boys who could beat us in toughness were the boys from the military academy. In the process of being tough, we had still felt the need to relax.

Now, relax with what? Just fall asleep? No! People wanted an induced sleep in order to relax. We came to know they were using various kinds of sleeping pills, marijuana, hashish and different types of locally-made alcoholic drinks. Well, that was during the early 1980s, when rapid westernisation was taking place among the youth of this country. A pair of blue jeans with a pack Marlboro peeping out of your pocket were the highest form of displaying smartness around.

This was the time when the youth started thinking that Bangladesh was a land of nothingness and they must go to America in order to get a life. This was the time when we saw an American pop music boom in this country; we heard many of the Yankee musicians used to perform on the stage with the help of various types of drugs; we thought drugs increased your focus and concentration.

It was also a time when a dictator was running the country. No one wanted him, but he hanged on for about a decade. The students were in the forefront in the struggle against him. In order to subside the students’ movements, various kinds of narcotics started proliferating into the campuses.

That was perhaps the time when a new generation of drug mafia and peddlers were born across the country. A large number of drug traders started selling the dreadful substances across the country. Heroine and phensedyl were the most popular narcotic substances of the time.

The jackals across the border were watching our terrain full of willing drug abuser with their wolfish designs; they spread their clutches from overseas with, of course, the help of local franchises. The new narcotic substance named yaba arrived in the nook and corners of Bangladesh during the 1990s.

It was also the time when birth privately-run universities took place in this country. The boys and girls who thought they would leave the country for America but had no other choice to get admitted in these universities were the primary targets of the drug lords active in this country.

Easy targets. Sitting ducks. This was the time when not only boys but also swarms of girls started to get allured like bees. What was a hush-hush habit of abuse with the earlier generations came out in the streets with a full-throttle addiction among the youth of the country.

Now, a huge number of youths are immersed in the phony world of yaba they don’t know their way back to normal life. We as a nation had showed our nonchalance to this grave problem for a long time; we cannot deny the fact that we let the enemies of humanity to take roots in our society. Where do we go from here? How do we make our land narcos-free? Is it at all possible? Or are we just displaying our concerns for the sake of showing?

Now that we witness a war against narcos, we wish that it’s a real war. Elimination of peddlers in gunfights may not solve the problem. If we don’t strike at the root, this drive may end up in a whimper after quite a lot of bangs. If we end up in a whimper, our willingness to tackle the scourge of drugs may go out of our hands.

Ekram Kabir is a story-teller and a columnist.