A Hundred Weeks Against Addiction: What the Nasha Mukt Yuva Campaign Is Actually Trying to Change
Summary
The Prime Minister launched the Nasha Mukt Yuva for Viksit Bharat Sankalp Abhiyan on 2 August 2026 through video conferencing, addressing over one crore young people connected from more than 28,000 locations.
●The launch begins a 100-week nationwide Jan Bhagidari campaign against substance abuse, with weekly activities held every Sunday including sports events, walkathons, meditation sessions, cultural programmes, nukkad nataks, discussion forums and art competitions.
●The campaign sits alongside an existing architecture: the National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction for prevention, the Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan for awareness, Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts for treatment, and the Narco-Coordination Centre mechanism for enforcement coordination.
●India's benchmark evidence remains the 2019 national survey by AIIMS for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which estimated about 2.26 crore opioid users nationally.
●The analytical question is whether awareness at scale connects to treatment capacity.
India's drug policy runs on two tracks that sit in different ministries.
●Supply reduction is governed by the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, enforced principally by the Narcotics Control Bureau under the Ministry of Home Affairs, with coordination through the Narco-Coordination Centre mechanism established in 2016 and its state and district-level tiers.
●Demand reduction sits with the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which runs the National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction, the Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan launched in 2020, and funds Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts along with community-based peer-led interventions.
●The evidentiary base for both is the 2019 National Survey on Extent and Pattern of Substance Use in India, conducted by the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre at AIIMS, which remains the only nationally representative estimate.
●Article 47 of the Constitution, a Directive Principle, directs the State to bring about prohibition of intoxicating drinks and drugs injurious to health.
Drug policy is split across two ministries by design — enforcement under Home Affairs, demand reduction under Social Justice — and campaigns fail when the second is not matched by treatment capacity.
◎ In Simple Words
The government has started a campaign to stop young people from getting into drugs. The Prime Minister spoke to more than a crore young people online at the same time. For the next hundred weeks there will be an activity every Sunday somewhere in the country, like a run, a street play or a sports match, to keep the message going and to make it something people do together rather than something they are lectured about.
Factual Pointers
Practice · 2 questions
Which Directive Principle of State Policy relates to prohibition of intoxicating drinks and drugs injurious to health?
In India's drug control architecture, demand reduction programmes are principally administered by which ministry?
Health & Nutrition Policy
Practise past questions on related topics in Arena.