Re-entry of brown poison in Kullu Valley, Himachal

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HimVani

The writer of this article fell victim to drug addiction in 1981 before finding the willpower and courage to come out of the abyss in 1988. But, even after stopping its use, he found it almost impossible to regain his lost health and wealth throughout the life. He died just two days after writing this article last month. The article was sent to us by his children to pay homage to the kind soul of their beloved father.

Cannabis Plant

Image courtesy: stock.xchng

I went through the article titled ‘Kullu residents on night vigil against drugs’ published on this website (HimVani) some time back. Though it appeared to catch the essence of the problem, I wish to throw some more light on the issue.

Drug addiction problem in Kullu Valley of Himachal Pradesh, actually started some 30 years back in the late ’70s when Russian forces invaded Afghanistan and many Afghans took refuge in India. As these Afghans belonged to cold places, most of them came to Kullu-Manali where they found the climate very similar to their home country. They initially stayed in rented hotels and later took up private houses on rent. Along with their living habits, they also brought with them their trade practices, including sale of heroine.

Being quite attractive in looks, they first befriended local educated youths with whom they found it easier to communicate. Slowly, they also transferred their bad habits to these youths. This is how smack addiction first got introduced to Kullu Valley. In the beginning, they gave free puffs, and later when the youths got used to it, they started charging for what they offered, demanding a higher price every time a youth approached them. As they found this trade very lucrative, they started mastering the local dialect also and became more conversant with the local masses.

Youths in the Kullu Valley were already aware of cannabis, which was easily available due to the plant growing naturally in the region. The Afghans, in order to expand their business, targeted cannabis addicts, offering them smack, which is more sedative in nature than cannabis. Slowly, they developed a network of local drug peddlers by making them aware of demand for cannabis in foreign lands. It was at this time that many local cannabis traders who faced difficulty in selling it locally now became suppliers of smack.

They now started moving out of Kullu to sell cannabis in bigger drug markets like Delhi and Goa. Some of these smugglers who carried cannabis to these places were nabbed by active police of that time and were put behind bars and sentenced for eight to 10 years.

In the late ’80s, the government and local social workers started massive awareness campaigns against the brown poison (smack) with active support of police, which was considered very just at that time, and many rehabilitation centres were set up in the area. Smack traders, who were mainly foreigners at that time, were threatened, arrested and even shunted out of Kullu Valley.

But those who, as I earlier said, were arrested for cannabis trafficking and who had seen the kingdom of smack trade in Kullu were undergoing their sentences in Goa or Delhi jails, never saw these social campaigns and sufferings of addicts at the rehabilitation centres.

So, when these cannabis traders came back after serving their sentences in prison in the late ’90s, they also brought in the old mindset that they would establish smack trade in Kullu and would never try their luck again with cannabis export. They came back to Kullu and started re-establishing the old villain back into innocent locals. So people of the old era who had seen the black days of the brown poison, are today horrified because it’s their children now who are being victimised by these smack traders. This time, there are no foreigners but locals who are doing it. These locals have deep political and police contacts, which make them highly secure to run this graveyard business very well. As per your article that locals are carrying campaigns against drug addiction once again, but the effort is proving fruitless because the poison is being spread by local people itself.

Until the central government and very high authorities take serious note of the problem, this poison will seep into the whole of Himachal and a whole new generation will rot. So it is my request to the government and just people like our President, who want to see India as a highly developed country by 2020, to order a probe into the matter as early as possible, because only young determined people with vigour and strength can take India to a stage of development, not the rotten youth dying of smack addiction. It’s my humble request to the youth – please do not get involved in drug addiction and rather build determination to uproot this menace for ever from our land of gods.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Keep the traders of death away from your youth.When reqired,deport the Afghans caught selling drugs.

  2. Drugs are the enemy of mankind.

    A drug user is never your friend. His only friend and god is drug. The drug addiction in mind is so powerful that all common sense is wiped out and human being have become DRUG ZOMBIE. I believe he has lost his status as human being and become hungry ghost. The only cure is to give up drug use and start cleaning one self to attain again humanity.

    Drug user do anything to get his drug so it is justified to fight back using with the same means: with all possible means, otherwise society will lose and the children born from drug users can forthcoming life be auspicious?

    I suggest a law that gives jail for years for use of any drug. And sending to Himalaya area 2 million drug tests, those who indicate a use of drug straight to jail may the user be police or thug or judge etc.
    Himalaya areas should employ 10 000 people to go every where in Himalaya area and test people and those who are caught using a drug straight to prison.

    It is not costly to launch such campaigns against drug use and there are many countries/companies who are willing to support such a good cause.

    And drug use society concerns all, it is not possible to say it is not my business I dont care let them use the drugs and leave me alone!! Sooner or later it will catch your attention if you are alive. And then you can get killed or anything can happen because drug users have no intelligence.They think only how to get satsified with a drug.

    If even tobacco is a product of a demon, whose products are drugs?

    Tobacco:
    ‘the guide that leads the blind on a false path which ends in a precipice’
    by Kyabjé Jigdrel Yeshe Dorje, Düdjom Rinpoche

    Om Swasti:

    With supreme appreciation and deep respect for Padmasambhava – wisdom manifestation of all Buddhas and union of the Buddha families – I shall relate the history of tobacco. Approximately a hundred years after Buddha Shakyamuni’s parinirvana, a Chinese demon, maddened with obsession, spoke these dying words:
    “Through my body I wish to lead the beings of this earth to lower realms. Bury my body intact and eventually a plant, different from all others, will grow out of my remains. Merely by smelling it, people will experience pleasure in body and mind, far more joyful than the union of male and female. It will spread far and wide until most of the beings on this earth will enjoy it.”

    At present the actual fruition of this wish is clearly evident. Opium and other related intoxicants taken by mouth or nose, neither help quench thirst nor satisfy hunger. They do not possess a taste which is delicious, and they are bereft of anything which promotes health or which strengthens one’s life force. These substances serve to increase nervousness and blood pressure. They also cause cancer and pulmonary disease. At this time, many people, from all levels of society, develop irresistible attraction for these substances and proceed to consume them without control – and thus demonic intentionality has borne fruit.

    In the gTérma of Chögyal Ratna Lingpa it is stated:
    ‘Padmasambhava bound the Nine Demonic Brothers under oath, but they were breakers of samaya, and the youngest of them found a way to undermine their commitment to protect beings. He told his kindred: “Brothers, do not despair, listen to me. I shall manifest myself in the country of China as tobacco; the name of this toxin will be ‘the black poison’. It will grow in the border lands, from whence it will spread to Tibet. The people of Tibet will consume this enjoyable substance. By the strength of this, the five neurotic poisons will increase. Rejecting the ten positive actions, people will practise the ten negative ones. The lives of the lineage holders will become precarious, and they will depart for the Buddha Fields. The smoke of this poison, penetrating the earth, will annihilate hundreds of thousands of cities of the kLu. Rain will not fall, harvest and livestock will not thrive, there will be civil unrest, plagues, and calamities. The poison’s smoke rising into the sky will destroy celestial dimensions; untimely eclipses and comets will appear. The essential fluids and veins of those who smoke will dehydrate. It causes the four hundred and four diseases to arise. Whoever smokes will be reborn in the lower realms. If one smokes and others inhale the odour, it will be as if one were ripping out the hearts of six million beings.’

    According to the gTérma of Sang-gyé Lingpa:
    ‘In this decadent age people will indulge in unwholesome behaviour. In particular, rather than eating nourishing food, people will consume the substances which are poisonous and evil-smelling. Interrupting what they are doing, they will consume the poison. They will need to spit, their noses will run, their health and complexion will fade.’

    The gTérma of Rig’dzin Go’dem predicts:
    ‘In the ultimate decadent age people will absorb poisonous vomit, food of dri za’i. Merely smelling it, one will go to the Mar-med Myal-wa. For this reason give it up right now.’

    From the predictions discovered by Düd’dül Dorje:
    ‘Practitioners will enjoy inhaling the smoke of these plants and sniffing their powder and the country will be invaded by samaya-breakers. They will be deceived by illusion and experience the arising of obsessive characteristics. As a sign of the exhaustion of merit they will have causes for tears which will flow uncontrollably.’

    The gTérmas of Longsel reveal:
    ‘The time when people smoke these vile substances is also the time when close friends will poison each other’s minds.’

    The gTérmas of Thugchog Dorje specify:
    ‘Because of the five neurotic poisons, the obsessions, animosities, strife, arguments, and miseries of beings will blaze like an inferno. As the ten good qualities are discarded, negativity will rage like a storm. Wholesome behaviour will be neglected, while perverse practices will be promulgated. In this degenerate age the Protectors will vanish as demonic beings assume power. People will inhale tobacco smoke, and the spatial-veins of discriminative wisdom will become blocked, whilst agitation and distorted emotions become intensified. The central channel will be obstructed and the clarity of awareness will die. Exhaustion of energy will cause agitation around the world. Religious artifacts, the objects of veneration, will deteriorate; perverted ideologies and false religions will spread. The Protectors will turn aside and look only towards Mount Méru. Foreigners will invade Tibet, and Tibetans will be forced to stray in the border lands. Doctrines of Illusion will spread and the world will become a dimension of hell.’

    The gTérma of Dro’dül Lingpa predicted:
    ‘By merely smelling the odour of these herbs, grasses and leaves will spring from demonic blood, one will find oneself in Vajra Hell.’

    A prediction of Ma-gÇig Labdrön states:
    ‘In the final period of disputation a substance will appear which one ingests orally, and it will aggravate all five neuroses. It will originate in China, extend to Mongolia and Tibet. Wherever it travels it will be consumed, and wherever it is consumed – rainfall will become irregular, accompanied by severe frost and hail. If practitioners consume this substance, even were they to practise for a hundred æons – they will not realise their yidams. In future lives, they will wander incessantly in the three lower realms, where even the compassion of the Buddhas will have no power to help them.’

    There are innumerable other predictions concerning tobacco – the use of which has been particularly forbidden by accomplished masters of both Sarma and Nyingma traditions. The vajra words of Padmasambhava were not given to deceive practitioners, so do not entertain doubts as to: ‘how can so many problems arise from smoking a natural plant?’ Aconite is also a plant, yet eating a small quantity of it can be lethal. If this should be the case with a plant, at the physical level, why could not the fruit of the demonic intentionality cause spiritual death? Understanding this, the wise will render themselves a great kindness by renouncing tobacco and narcotics. In doing so, may the honourable and wise who avoid the path to the precipice have the good fortune of finding respite in the ecstatic garden of liberation.

  3. The law of the land is not very strict. This is the reason that aliens are having gala time in HP, especially Kullu while selling drugs.

    We have to follow strict laws like Kingdon of Saudi Arabia against drugs where they award capital punishment to the offenders.

  4. ye sab kuch jo is article me likha hai sahi hai kuch had tak kyunki jo ye sab chije lete hai wo kahin se bhi jaroorat ko poora kar lete hai is problem ke do soluition hai ek cannbis ko khatam karo ya fir jo is ke addicter hai unhe kahin door le jaya jaye

    ye sab kuch main isliye keh rahan hoon coz mere aspass ke area me aise bahot hai wo sab ya purchase

    karke late hai or agar jaib me paise nahin hote to aass pass ke ilako main dhoond kar khud haath maar kar paido{tree} se uttar lete hai isleye ye problem choty moti nahi hai aap kya kar sakte hai ki jo addicter hai unhe jail me band karwa denge

    kitno ko

    ek baar kitne time ke liye bahar ate hi fir suuroo ho jayega

    or jail bhi kam nahin hoti aiso ke liye jail ke ander

    police wale paiso ke badle aap kuch bhi mangwa sakte hai ormain kisi ek jail ki baat nahin kar rahan hoon 90% jail aisy hi hai maine khud apni ankhon se dekha hai

    or ye suruwat achi hai keep it up

  5. wot so ever ha been written in this article is hundred percent truth the locals involved in this business of SMACK are not many and very well known in KULLU,local people have complained to police many atimes but in vain.These people have not only involved local politicians but also police with themselves…These smack dealers very openly boast off in market place that we keep police and all politicians in our pocket and nobody can touch us.So Innocent People of the valley fearing these boasts of these smack traders,despite of knowing each and everything does not speak openly about them…If anything stern has to be done it should be initiated by central government authorities only excluding local police authorities…

  6. Playing with fire, snake and drugs are identical. All of them will destroy the innocent player. I saw a

    writing in front of Church " beware of the high price to pay for a low living". For a temporary thrill, millions of people experiment with

    illicit drugs, and the first try leads to eternal trap from which most of them will not escape. Can we calculate the risk, ruin of health and

    wealth in this diabolical thril ride?

    Anybody who sells the drugs must be

    punished because they are carriers of

    death, so they need to pay a due price

    for their irresponsible action. They don't deserve any leniency in any form.

  7. see wat i feel is dis that ppl actually take it as a style statement initially n later it becomes n addiction

    in life i haven't seen any government takin action against it ……..

    so a think there should be n awareness n special teams to root out this problem

  8. i have friends who consume marijuana or 'bhang' or 'joint' as they call n i think today it has become a fashion you can easily go and see people in pools and snookers and wherever you find a gathering people consuming it by filling it in cigarettes,etc.

    and for them its not a crime

    they enjoy doing it.

    you must have seen the elections this time,politicians where promising for food,water,etc. but noone said anything about this cannabis trade.even the public doesn't worry.i know people who earn there living selling joints coming from lag valley,kharal,etc.

    people here usually go to malana once an year and they do have contacts and to tell you here are elite people not necessarily politicians who are major players running this trade.

    some boys last time went from banjar to goa to sell marijuana but were caught in between and nepalis and tibetis have another trend, they make a small 'batti' wrap it and put it inside their assholes and sell it down in the south and don't have chances of getting caught.

    i don't know what to do but something must be done for sure…..

    and to tell you,this is a fake name and a fake id for sure..

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