This Heroin Epidemic Inspired a Bollywood Movie. But Nothing Has Changed.

In the winding lanes of Preetnagar, a small town in the north Indian state of Punjab, Gurpreet Singh Chauhan asks me to keep an eye on my bag and my foot away from his motorbike silencer.

It's a large expensive bike with indulgent seats and shiny orange handles, the kind that features in Punjabi pop music videos. It doesn't belong here between old houses and green fields. "I bought less heroin for six months, and then I could afford this bike," Chauhan says triumphantly.

Chauhan is also called Sonu, which is a name that doesn't suit him at all. It is limp and childish, where Sonu is tall and dramatic. Later, when I visit his house for tea, we sit outside in the stark darkness. "I don't like it when people look straight at my face," he tells me. "I also don't like being in enclosed spaces."

Chauhan started using heroin when he was 18 years old. Young and heartbroken over a love that still haunts him, he took to drugs on what he deems a day of a bad judgment. "She got married to some guy from the city. I got married to heroin at my doorstep," he says.

Here in Preetnagar, home to 200 families, more than 30 young men are heroin users and dealers. Once known for cultural solidarity between Pakistan and India, Punjabi border villages like this have become active drug hubs. An estimated 232,000 people across the state are opioid dependent, according to a government report, and 70 percent of the users are young people.

Punjab's drug epidemic, sometimes fueled by the police, is popular enough to have inspired a Bollywood movie and awareness campaigns. But no one has taken effective action to curb the epidemic. Only 2000 addicts have reached rehabilitation centers, though almost 80 percent of the drug users have sought help.

It doesn't help that the problem starts earlier every year. In Preetnagar, that means 12-year-old boys are already addicted.

"They come to us before they go anywhere else. We get them at their best." Chauhan tells me. "It's good money. And what else do I have to do? I'll never be educated; I have no interest in working my land. Drugs are all I have. "

Punjabis have been traditional consumers of opium for centuries. Today, the opium that was used for recreational smoking in the form of pure opium, or apheem, is used to manufacture the world's most popular heroin. Other substances taken are a mix of pharmaceuticals, cocaine and cheap smack.

Heroin is expensive, but not expensive enough; available in this area for 1500 rupees per gram (about $23). One gram can last most regular users two days. And though private dealers and household groups manufacture many of the drugs illegally, the government also bears the responsibility for the large drug sales.

As early as 2014, state involvement in Punjab's drug peddling has been investigated by the media. In the year before, journalists at the Indian Express and other outlets exposed Punjab's largest drug racket and Jagdish Bhola, a former cop and influential member of Punjabi society.

Bhola, worth 7 million rupees (about $105,000), was charged with manufacturing, possessing and selling pseudoephedrine, one of the ingredients in meth, He was also charged for illegal possession of arms. But it took the court almost two years to sentence Bhola, and suspend him from duty, which allowed the drugs to circulate under state supervision even longer.

In the villages of Punjab, it's clear that any attempt at a crackdown has not been strong enough.

Chauhan drives me to a small shack near the Pakistan border where we see a stack of heroin waiting to be delivered. He takes his bike into the shack and drives it out in mere seconds; we cannot be seen by anyone.

"No photographs," he says grimly, nodding at the men waiting outside. "I may escape. But you won't."

Routes of Addiction

In 2007, it was reported that Afghanistan produced 8,200 metric tons of opium, making the Taliban the largest heroin producer in the world. The American government has claimed to make efforts to stop this production, which fuels some terrorist activity from groups like the Taliban, but a United Nations study in 2014 showed that the heroin production in Afghanistan has reached an all time high.

The Taliban has been exporting opium and heroin to many parts of the world, but close proximity with India makes it a prime target. Heroin is pushed in through the borders of neighboring Pakistan, where border control is scarce and corrupt, making it a viable passage for smugglers.

Kashmir, a state in the northeastern corner of India, was first to fall prey to drug smuggling on the borders, substances started to be brought in with gold, fake notes and weapons. But due to high militarization in the conflicted state, smugglers shifted focus to Punjab.

It is not just the substance that is being exported by the Taliban, but also corruption, terror and the complete dissolution of the law. A terror attack in Pathankot, Punjab earlier this year that involved drug smugglers allegedly included Salwinder Singh, superintendent of police, who might have created a safe passage for the terrorists into Punjab.

"Who's going to keep us safe? It's those that are supposed to protect us that are letting them in," says Amrit, a young convict I spoke to in Pathankot jail. "These men take cuts of profits and we get put in jail," he says, pointing to a policeman. In response he gets hit on the shin.

While drugs come through the borders, much of their processing happens within India. Pharmaceuticals and chemicals are manufactured inside factories in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, making for easy distribution, Indian Express reported. The police are some of the main circulators of the substances, and often convicts are easy targets for heroin at high prices. Though many of Punjab's jails now have rehabilitation centers, drugs are easily available inside them as well.

In conversation with a student of Lovely Professional University in Phagwara, outside the city of Jalandhar, I am told that the university grounds serve as a drug market for nearby dealers.

There have been arrests of international students from Nigeria and Uganda for selling drugs to students on campus. And in August this year, a local politician associated with the BJP—India's right-wing political party—was arrested for selling chemical pills to college students.

"It is an industry created by the rich and powerful. No one can fight it," says a hotel owner in Jalandhar, who asked to remain anonymous. "Universities, restaurants, local shops — these have all become outlets for drug sales."

Broken Rehab

After the drug problem in Punjab was investigated over the past two years, there was a brief, reckless crackdown on drugs. Police made erratic arrests, and ruthless accusations, and then nothing happened.

Most of the drug-related investigations have been dismissed by the Punjab government, and the few government-funded rehabilitation centers can't accommodate the scale of their patients. In Pathankot, the government hospital has 10 beds, and two doctors, of which one was on vacation when I visited.

Outside state hospitals, many rehab centers are private clinics that convert themselves hoping for more business. The doctors are poorly trained, and medical provisions from the state to overcome addiction is almost negligible in Punjab. Money is instead invested in large, indulgent campaigns.

"Most rehabilitation centers are dumping grounds, functioning without approved programs, proper supervision and inadequate social support." says Dr. J.P.S. Bhatia, a psychiatrist who runs the The Hermitage, one of the only facilities in Punjab that offers longterm, intensive rehabilitation. "Often, alternative drugs are given to patients to get over their primary addictions. These are not cures, but new addictions."

In Rurka Kalan, a village in the Jalandhar district, Sandeep (name changed to protect identity) has just been discharged from his rehabilitation center after his second attempt at ending his addiction.

At 25 years old, Sandeep's nails are black, needles have been shot in every part of his body, and he can hardly sit up while he talks. Sandeep used to be a student and local driver, but started to deal for a few young men from a rich family in Punjab. Soon, he was hooked, and started to DJ at weddings and local parties, where he could also deal.

"They would threaten me to never take drugs again," Sandeep says of his rehabilitation center. "They told me they would beat me if I so much as twitched."

After the uproar in 2014, the police executed routine check ups and what the Punjab government claimed was a ruthless clean-up of their state. Addicts were put into jails, where they were beaten, tortured and given more drugs so they wouldn't die of withdrawals. Families were pulled into an archaic system of penalty and law that did not intend to cure, but brutally punish.

Though awareness has spread and moles exposed, the system has not improved. Low-income populations have been interrogated, and cheaper drugs abolished, but the larger economy of heroin still prevails.

"Chemicals are for losers," adds Sandeep, "If I ever go back to drugs, it'll be for the real stuff (heroin)."

'Punjab is Flying'

Despite the number of young men who still fail to recover from years of addiction, the reigning political party, the Akali Dal, continues to dismiss Punjab's drug problem. In 2015 alone, 86 people died in Punjabi jails, according to the Indian Express, and heroin addiction increased by 20 percent.

On the first of September 2016, drug retests took place across Punjab, and politicians claimed that the drug addiction of Punjab was a myth created by opposition parties. Earlier, in September, they said it was all an effort to defame the government and win points for the elections in 2017. Meanwhile, propaganda in the hands of the government continues, and the drug racket in Punjab keeps growing.

On the bus to Jalandhar, a city in the northern part of the state, a radio ad plays loudly. "All these people saying that Punjab is "udta" (flying, or high) tell them they are wrong! Death to those that defame Punjab!". Some passengers cheer, others nod in agreement, and the young bus conductor next to me chuckles. "Everyone knows what is going on. But no one can say anything. They're scared," he says.

Our bus stops several times. While everyone else gets out to stretch their legs, the bus conductor meets other young men under a tree to whom he hands large black packets. "There's a big party in the city today," he says. "Want to go?"

Despite media coverage and documentation through other mediums like Bollywood, the menace runs strong. A documentary called Glut made the rounds a few years ago. But it was really Udta Punjab, a sparkling film with huge stars and intense scenes, that had the entire country looking north.

Udta Punjab, which was almost banned by the government of India, does justice to the representation of the various levels of drug abuse in Punjab, and gives it a technicolor cult appeal that young Punjabis have begun to wear with pride. When the film came out, the entire country seemed to have an opinion. And there was hope that the heightened awareness would push Punjab to finally take action. But nothing happened.

Punjab's drug problem is now also a theme for the music industry in the state, which gives it a recreational air, and disguises it as a quirk, instead of a real issue that elevates corruption and oppression in the state. Today the drug is creating a class of new money that divides the gap between the rich and the poor.

Despite valiant efforts by a few, Punjab remains the same today as three years ago—at the thin mercy of a strong mafia state that executes wide smuggling compasses, and continues to prey on the young.

No Escape

On my last day in Punjab, Chauhan and I drive to his friend Rajiv Kumar's house. Rajiv has just moved to Kuwait to work in a hotel and he's home for a visit.

"I needed to get away from here. Otherwise I could never give up." he tells me. "The police, the government, local leaders, everyone is involved. There is nowhere inside Punjab you can escape. So I ran."

As Chauhan and I drive away from Rajiv's house, he tells me that Rajiv is not a real man, but a disgrace. "Gabrus (real men) don't run. They are not afraid," he says, and as we drive through someone tells us that an ATM has been dismantled from the ground.

"See! That's real Punjab," he says loudly, with what seems like pride.

"Real men. Real crimes."