Climate change and substance abuse behaviours

Apart from the prospect of addiction, environmental contamination also occurs from improper disposal of consumer-generated drug waste, writes Rashikkha Ra Iyer

In 2023, sustainability was much spoken about on a mainstream level. Although aspects like overuse and greenwashing may have tinted the meaning a little bit, climate crisis remains a debilitating problem. Anthropogenic climate change, aspects perpetrated by human activity are the ones that we can work towards.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), formulated in 2015 replaced the former Millennium Development Goals (MDG) consisting of 17 goals, 169 targets, and 193 United Nations Member States that are collectively working towards the achievement of these by 2030. Every year, October 26 is observed as World Sustainability Day and on this day, the internet is usually imbued with campaigns, awareness programmes and several conversations around this. SDG3 is to achieve good health and well-being for all and across diverse age groups. Within SDG3, target 3.5 is focused on prevention and treatment of substance abuse including narcotic drugs and harmful alcohol use.

Substance use disorders suffuse a huge part of public health challenges with diverse risk factors anchoring the same. They also interact with global health worldwide ensuing cascading effects on the health-related targets of SDGs including the health of children, maternal well-being, infectious diseases such as HIV which are consequential of unhygienic shared use of drug paraphernalia, non-communicable diseases, poisoning and most importantly mental health. This thus necessitates actions taken to be more than just the provision of help for those who abuse drugs.

The most decisive step is to work towards people’s attitudes concerning the whole issue. For instance, studies indicate that the effectiveness of plastic disposal systems is correlational to people’s attitudes towards them. One might find this bewildering. However, studies show that the reason why people’s aspirations are often not converted to actions about plastic is because they place increasing responsibility only on authorities to disseminate steps. Similarly, even though the issue of substance abuse is recognised as a concerning public health challenge, people might often engage in stigmatic perceptions towards those struggling from it. This stigma stops help offered on behalf of the ones who hold the belief and the ones suffering from addiction from asking for help, due to shame.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) does dedicated work around this. Several non-governmental organisations in India are working towards substance misuse recovery. These organisations must thus make full use of the guidelines provided by the UNODC and closely adhere to the standards to accelerate outcomes. These organisations must also have staff exclusively dedicated to conducting research work through well-defined drug monitoring systems. This can thus make and inform reliable data that UNODC can document. ‘Research is cumbersome and difficult to undertake.’ This is a common attitude across many of the organisations. They fail to realise that the success of every individual policy is preceded by well-conducted research based on reliable, valid, diversely sampled data.

Aspects such as online drug trafficking must be understood in their entirety by the police force to be able to tackle these organised crime groups. Despite parents going to great lengths to protect their adolescent children, adolescents are always one click away from the most dangerous drugs.

Drugs bought from online darknet sites may not be entirely what they are stated as and draw out extortionate money from these innocent children. This might also be very inviting as a lucrative career to young minds who’d find it effortless money, thus breeding the next generation of criminals.

Prescription drugs also pose vicissitudes of issues. Apart from the prospect of addiction, environmental contamination also occurs from improper disposal of consumer-generated drug waste. The complex array of regulations around the handling of drug waste remains ineffective as long as the public, who make up the system remains ignorant or callous about it. Improper disposal of excess medication introduces diverse pharmaceutical ingredients into the environment.

A fully integrated sustainable approach to effective drug disposal systems would thus involve a range of stakeholders and inclusions of aspects integrating dispensing costs into healthcare costs. It is imperative that we neither stigmatise people nor engage in sobriety shaming. Every day is indeed Earth Day and we should be thinking of the diverse ways in which we can contribute to the success of SDGs.

(The author is a multidisciplinary professional who works in the UK.)