The definition of insanity: Four decades of India’s war on drugs

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

For nearly 41 years at the national level — since the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act came into force in November 1985 — India’s primary approach to illicit drugs has focused on criminalisation, enforcement, and punishment aimed at eradicating the use, possession, sale, and production of narcotic and psychotropic substances. In 2006, Sikkim became the first state to enact its own version of this approach, the Sikkim Anti-Drugs Act (SADA), built on the same deterrence-based model but tailored to the substances driving abuse within the state — chiefly the misuse of medicinal and pharmaceutical preparations rather than the full range of narcotics covered nationally.

After decades of aggressive law enforcement, arrests, incarceration, compulsory rehabilitation, and policing, an important question remains: has the objective truly been achieved?

If the intention of these laws and policies was to eradicate drug use and dismantle illegal supply chains and production, it is necessary to honestly assess where this approach has led. Globally, drug use has not declined: the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 292 million people used drugs in 2022, a 20 percent rise over the preceding decade. India’s own 2019 national survey — conducted by AIIMS for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment — found roughly 3.1 crore (31 million) cannabis users and 2.26 crore (22.6 million) opioid users, a sharp rise from the country’s previous such survey in 2004. Despite rising arrests, drug use continues to climb across many regions, trafficking networks persist, production continues, prisons remain overcrowded, overdose deaths and bloodborne infections are on the rise, and vulnerable communities continue to suffer from stigma, marginalisation, criminalisation, violence, and poor access to healthcare.

This raises a larger, more uncomfortable question: were these laws truly designed to eradicate illicit substances, use, production, and supply — or have they increasingly become mechanisms to punish people, through arbitrary detention, arrest, harassment, forced drug testing, forced rehabilitation, prolonged court processes, and disproportionate sentencing — particularly marginalised communities of people who use drugs?

The data bears this out. NDPS Act cases carry one of the highest conviction rates of any law in India — over 90 percent in recent years, per NCRB data — and a striking share of these cases involve personal possession rather than trafficking: in states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Kerala, 75 to 97 percent of all NDPS arrests are for consumption, not supply. Set that against the conviction rate for murder (37.7 percent) or rape (27.8 percent), and the pattern is hard to ignore: it is far easier, and far more common, to convict someone for using drugs than to convict someone for taking a life.

It is time to critically reflect on whether the control of illicit substances has ever been guided purely by public health, science, and the wellbeing of humanity — or whether many aspects of drug prohibition have also been shaped by political, culture, and economic agendas.

A look at the history of American drug control bears this out. Early prohibition laws were aimed squarely at race and immigration: anti-opium laws targeted Chinese immigrants in the 1870s, and anti-cannabis laws in the 1910s and 20s targeted Mexican immigrants. Decades later, a senior aide to President Nixon reportedly admitted that the 1971 “war on drugs” was designed to criminalise Black Americans and the anti-war left. That same framework was then exported worldwide — the United States championed the international treaties, most notably the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, that pressured other countries, India included, to adopt similarly punitive frameworks, extending American drug-policy preferences, and by extension its influence, across the globe.

Global evidence increasingly demonstrates that punitive laws and policies alone do not eliminate drug use or addiction. Instead, excessive criminalisation often drives people further away from healthcare, increases unsafe drug practices, fuels stigma and fear, and strengthens underground criminal markets.

Policymakers, leaders, and societies genuinely committed to protecting human life and public health must move beyond fear, punishment, and moral judgment, and instead adopt approaches rooted in evidence, human rights, harm reduction, treatment, social support, and meaningful community participation.

The real challenge before us today is not simply how to control drugs, but how to respond to drug-related issues in a manner that is humane, effective, just, and scientifically informed. It is worth remembering that the same UN system that, from the 1960s, encouraged member states to adopt prohibition as the path to a drug-free world is now, after the evident failure of those policies — a failure that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives — urging member states to move from a punitive approach to a public health one. The lives lost to the war on drugs, and to “just say no”-style campaigns, cannot be reversed. But it is important to recognise that this approach cannot continue indefinitely, before it costs still more.

In January 2019, the UN System Common Position on Drug Policy — endorsed by the UN Chief Executives Board, making it, for the first time, the unified position of the entire UN family of agencies — called on member states to pursue alternatives to conviction and punishment, including the decriminalisation of drug possession for personal use. That call has only grown louder since: in June 2023, sixteen UN Human Rights Special Mandates jointly concluded that drug use and possession for personal use should be decriminalised “as a matter of urgency,” alongside earlier UN joint statements calling for an end to compulsory drug detention, forced rehabilitation, and coercive drug testing. Any member state that continues to criminalise people for personal use and possession is working against the very foundation of human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — a declaration India itself helped shape. It was India’s own delegate, Hansa Mehta, who is widely credited with changing the Declaration’s opening line from “all men are born free and equal” to “all human beings are born free and equal,” a contribution the UN Secretary-General himself has called indispensable to the document as we know it.

The UN, along with many other respected international bodies, has called for an end to punitive drug measures in favour of approaches grounded in public health, harm reduction, and social support. The UN’s own High Commissioner for Human Rights has gone further still, calling in 2024 for the “responsible regulation” of illicit substances as a way to take control of the trade away from criminal networks and the violence that surrounds it.

The larger question is whether our politicians and lawmakers are brave enough to call for the right action and to inform the public at large — or whether they will continue clinging to power through political rhetoric, propaganda, and the targeting of communities for their own benefit. In the end, the price is not paid by the people in power and position. It is ordinary, poor, and vulnerable people who pay it.

Views expressed are personal. Prashant Sharma is a Health & Rights Advocate.

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