Dear Mr. Omar Abdullah
Your recent response to a reporter’s question on banning alcohol in Jammu and Kashmir has stayed in public discussion for days. When asked about restrictions on alcohol, you reportedly replied, “Who is forcing youth to consume alcohol?” Perhaps you meant that individuals must also take responsibility for their own choices. That is understandable. No government can place a policeman inside every home, classroom, or marketplace.
Yet the statement felt incomplete to many people, especially to parents, teachers, doctors, counselors, and families already struggling with the growing crisis of addiction among youth in Jammu and Kashmir.The concern is not only about alcohol bans. The deeper concern is this: why do we often speak about drug abuse with urgency, but speak about alcohol abuse with hesitation?Sir, alcohol abuse is also drug abuse.
A young person destroyed by heroin and a young person destroyed by alcoholism may reach the same destination, broken health, shattered relationships, depression, violence, accidents, unemployment, and loss of dignity. The chemical may differ, but the damage to society can look frighteningly similar.
Across Kashmir today, one can hear stories that were once rare. Families quietly selling property for treatment. Mothers waiting outside rehabilitation centers. Students slipping into addiction after school years. Young boys beginning with cigarettes, moving toward alcohol, and eventually experimenting with stronger substances. Doctors, psychiatrists, and social workers repeatedly warn that addiction rarely arrives all at once. It usually enters slowly, disguised as experimentation, social acceptance, or stress relief.This is why public messaging from leadership matters.
When political leaders speak, people listen carefully, not only to the policy but also to the tone. A stronger and more reassuring response could have been, “Our government is serious about every form of substance abuse, including alcohol.” Such a statement would not have committed your government to total prohibition. It would simply have acknowledged that alcoholism too is a public health and social concern.That distinction matters.
In many societies, alcohol has become so normalized that its dangers are discussed only after tragedy occurs. A road accident caused by drunken driving becomes news for one day. Domestic violence under intoxication is hidden inside homes. Depression linked to alcoholism is rarely spoken about openly. Families often suffer silently because social shame prevents them from asking for help.Kashmir is not immune to these realities anymore.
For generations, Kashmiri society maintained strong social resistance against intoxicants. While no society is perfect, there was at least a shared understanding that substance abuse damaged both the individual and the collective moral fabric. Today, however, things are changing rapidly. Social media influence, unemployment, frustration, consumer culture, tourism economics, and easy access to various substances have altered the social atmosphere.
Many parents privately admit they are afraid. Teachers notice changing behavior among students. Doctors see rising stress disorders. Rehabilitation centers are no longer isolated institutions dealing with a few rare cases; they are becoming essential parts of the healthcare landscape.In such circumstances, reducing the debate to personal choice alone may unintentionally weaken the seriousness of the issue.
Yes, individuals must be responsible for their actions. But governments also shape public behavior every day through laws, awareness campaigns, taxation, regulation, and social messaging. If personal choice alone were enough, there would be no need for traffic rules, anti-smoking campaigns, or restrictions on dangerous substances.Societies intervene whenever private behavior begins creating public harm.
“Omar Abdullah’s suggestion to align alcohol sales with religious permission creates logistical confusion, implying a need for religious profiling at point-of-sale and further complicating the policy debate”
Nobody is asking the government to become authoritarian or intrusive. The question is about moral clarity and policy seriousness. If alcohol contributes to addiction, violence, disease, and social breakdown, then it deserves to be discussed honestly within the larger framework of substance abuse.
The irony is that many young people do not even consider alcohol dangerous anymore. They see it portrayed in films as modernity, in advertisements as sophistication, and in online culture as entertainment. Rarely do they see the hospital wards, the broken marriages, the ruined finances, or the mental health crises that alcoholism leaves behind.Perhaps that is where leadership becomes important, not to moral-police society, but to provide direction.
Kashmir is already carrying enough burdens. We are dealing with unemployment, mental health struggles, educational uncertainty, shrinking social trust, and growing anxiety among youth. Addiction only deepens these wounds. It does not matter whether the intoxicant comes in the form of heroin, synthetic drugs, pharmaceutical misuse, or alcohol. Once dependency begins, families suffer in similar ways.
There is also another reality we must confront honestly. Substance abuse is not merely a policing issue. It is deeply connected with hopelessness, isolation, peer pressure, and emotional distress. A young person who feels purposeless becomes more vulnerable to addiction. Therefore, the answer cannot be limited to raids, arrests, or occasional speeches.
Jammu and Kashmir urgently needs a comprehensive social response.Schools and colleges should have trained counselors. Sports infrastructure must reach rural areas. Rehabilitation centers need stronger support. Parents require awareness programs. Religious institutions, teachers, mohalla committees, and civil society groups should work together instead of acting in isolation. Youth engagement must become a year-round mission rather than an occasional slogan.Most importantly, public discourse must stop creating artificial separations between “acceptable addiction” and “dangerous addiction.”
Medical science does not treat alcoholism as harmless recreation when it becomes dependency. Hospitals do not separate alcohol-damaged organs from drug-damaged organs. Families crying over addicted children do not care whether the substance was legally sold or illegally smuggled. Pain inside homes does not follow legal definitions.
Sir, Kashmir’s young generation deserves clarity from all sections of leadership. They deserve a society that neither romanticizes intoxication nor ignores the complexity of addiction. They deserve policies rooted in compassion, prevention, treatment, and responsibility.
Your words carry influence across Jammu and Kashmir. At a time when society is deeply anxious about the future of its youth, many people expected a message that sounded less dismissive and more reassuring.
This debate should not become political. It should become human.Alcohol abuse is not outside the addiction crisis. It is part of it.And the earlier we admit that honestly, the better chance we have of protecting another generation from quietly slipping away.
Tail Piece: After statement by Omar Abdullah that liquor shops are meant for those whose religion permits alcohol consumption, a larger question naturally arises, will wine shops now be expected to check people’s IDs and determine their religion before selling alcohol? Instead of settling the debate, the statement seems to complicate the issue further.
(The author is a teacher and a researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora of Central Kashmir’s Budgam district. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
