Kashmir is losing its future

 There was a time when Kashmiri parents feared illness, accidents, or political violence. Today, that fear has shifted. Parents now check their child’s pockets instead of their homework. They count money in the drawer to see if anything is missing. They look for medicines that don’t belong in their home, and sometimes, trembling, they smell their child’s clothes not for perfume but for drugs. They worry about the debt their child might have taken from people to buy drugs.

This is the new pain of Kashmir.

Drug addiction isn’t something families talk about openly. It begins quietly and destroys quietly. In every neighborhood, there’s at least one house where the lights stay on late at night, not for celebration, but because a mother is awake, waiting for her son to come home. A father pretends everything is normal during the day but cries alone in the bathroom so no one sees him breaking down. The fights between children involved with their parents shake the whole family, all afraid for the child’s life.

These youth who once carried schoolbags and dreamed of careers are now standing on street corners, trembling, searching for a substance that’s killing them. They aren’t criminals. They’re trapped prey. Someone targeted them, someone earned money from their destruction, and someone continues hunting the next victim.

Behind every addicted boy, there is a drug mafia - a chain of suppliers, smugglers, and dealers who walk freely with full pockets while families drown in helplessness. These mafias know exactly whom to target: boys stressed, unemployed, insecure, or misunderstood. They approach them outside tuition centers, playgrounds, bus stands, cafés, slowly gaining trust, slowly destroying futures.

The damage isn’t just addiction. It spreads into homes like fire. Gold starts disappearing. Phones are secretly sold. Bike parts go missing. Mothers blame themselves, fathers lose their voices at home. Sisters feel unsafe around their own brothers during withdrawal. The shame doesn’t stay inside the walls neighbors whisper, relatives judge, and society prefers gossip over help.

But here’s the hardest truth: punishing the addicted boy won’t save Kashmir. Sending him to jail won’t break the drug chain. The real monsters are the ones who supply and profit, the ones who buy cars and build houses by selling poison to someone else’s child.

If Kashmir wants to win this battle, it must separate victims from criminals. The victims are the youth caught in addiction. They need treatment, rehabilitation, mental health support, and a society that gives them a chance to return with dignity. The criminals are the drug mafia, smugglers, distributors, and those protecting them. They must be hunted down, exposed, and punished without mercy because they show no mercy as they destroy our youth.

This fight can’t be left only to the police. It requires community courage. If a neighbor knows a drug peddler but stays silent to avoid trouble, another child will fall next. If families hide addiction because of what people will say, the boy might collapse before society notices. If schools treat an addicted teen like a failure instead of a victim, he’ll never ask for help again. Kashmir needs honesty, not silence. It needs awareness, not shame. It needs unity, not blame. We must protect our youth not by locking them away but by pulling them back to life. We must dismantle the mafia not by hoping someone else will do it but by standing strong together.

Kashmir has faced hard times before, but this crisis is different. This time, we aren’t losing land; we are losing children. Every addict is someone’s whole world. Every overdose isn’t just a statistic; it’s a home shattered forever. If we don’t act now, we’ll watch an entire generation vanish before our eyes. Kashmir can’t bury another dream. Most importantly, the youth need hope not speeches, not warnings hope in the form of opportunities, sports facilities, mental health support, skill development, and jobs. When young people feel valued and useful, mafias lose their customers. Kashmir has survived storms, conflict, and hardships and it will survive this too. But this time, the enemy lives among us, not across borders. Every life saved is a victory. Every drug dealer arrested is justice. Every recovered boy returning to family is a celebration.

It cannot afford to lose another youth to this deadly business. It’s time to save our children and jail those who are destroying them.