Young And Addicted: Drug Use Spikes Among School Kids

Sonu* sits by a barber shop in New Delhi’s Madangir area, a strong-smelling brown-paper-wrapped joint in one hand and a yellow Bongchie lighter in the other. He exhales a cloud of smoke, and the air around him reeks of uncured weed. He is 14 years old and has been smoking ganja since he was 12.

The teenager has been smoking marijuana long enough to have a preference— he prefers the Ganja that he buys from the Nehru stadium area to the charas he could obtain from Paharganj. “It’s cheaper, and I feel the hit, you see?” he marks his words with deep puffs of a fat joint and slow, dramatic exhales of smoke. 

Since he was first given a joint in the seventh standard, Sonu has tried “apheem, “cocaine,” and “Kitty-Meow-Meow.” He prefers to smoke over the “harder drugs;” it relaxes him. And Sonu needs to unwind, he says because he lives in a joint family with a father who has not worked since the pandemic and a mother who is “always shouting”. 

Sonu is one of lakhs of Indian children who are experimenting with drugs even before they hit their teens, in some cases as early as 11. A multi-city survey led by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, found that substance use among school-going children often begins around the age of 13, even younger in cases. 

The study, published in December 2025 in the National Medical Journal of India, is the most comprehensive review of adolescent substance use in the subcontinent. Researchers from AIIMS’s National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, led by Dr Anju Dhawan, polled 5,920 students across 10 urban centres, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Imphal, Jammu, Dibrugarh and Ranchi. 

Startling stats: One in Seven Have Tried Psychoactive Substances

The study showed that 15.1 per cent of students have tried at least one psychoactive substance in their lifetime, while 10.3 per cent reported using drugs in the last year, with 7.2 per cent clocking use in the past month. Experimentation among young kids, the study shows, is not isolated or rare cases, but part of a widespread pattern. 

Among the kids, four per cent reported trying tobacco and 3.8 per cent reported alcohol use. The most shocking part of the study is on opioids, which 40 lakh children reported using — nearly three per cent reported using non-prescribed pharmaceutical pills, two per cent reported (20 lakhs) cannabis use and almost two per cent (26 lakhs) also reported using inhalants like glue and solvents.

According to the study, the average age of initiation for all substances was 12.9 years, with inhalant use starting as young as 11.3 years and even heroin experimentation around 12.3 years.  

“Younger children are entering substance use, and this may be due to multiple factors, including children’s own (behavioural and emotional) vulnerability, family environment, peer pressure, availability, etc. Many of these are related to overall societal changes,” says Dr Dhawan. 

Patterns by Age, Gender and Environment

The study found that as the children get older, substance use increases sharply. Students in classes XI and XII are twice as likely to have used substances compared with those in class VIII.

At this age, “Substance use occurs due to multiple factors, including children’s own (behavioural and emotional) vulnerability, family environment, peer pressure, availability, etc. Trauma and poverty increase the risk as well. Family environment in terms of parental substance use, conflicts in the family contribute as well. Underscoring how adolescence — particularly late adolescence — becomes a critical risk period,” says Dhawan. 

Ananya* turned 16 in October, this year. She has a prescription for Ativan, a standard anti-anxiety medicine. She also smokes “maal” or charas, and has, for the past year, been supplementing the Ativan with Alprax, which she gets from her parents’ dresser drawer. “They’ve not yet noticed—they have a stack of them, and I take only a patta a month, or something like that— I don’t use it much, but sometimes I just want to sleep,” she explains. 

In the study, the gender divide is stark. Boys were more likely to report tobacco and cannabis use, while girls showed relatively higher rates of inhalant and opioid use. The data also showed that about 40 per cent of students who reported drug use said they had a family member who used tobacco or alcohol. Many noted the easy availability of different substances.

Nearly half the respondents believed tobacco products were easily accessible to someone their age, while a large number said the same thing about alcohol, bhang, ganja and heroin.  

The Hidden Role of Emotional Distress

Beyond availability, the survey pointed to emotional and psychological factors tied to substance use. Students who reported substance use in the past year were more likely to score higher on measures of emotional distress, conduct problems and hyperactivity than non-users, suggesting that drugs may be tied to underlying mental health stresses. 

Ananya started taking Alprax after trying cocaine at a friend’s 16th birthday party last year. “After I did a few lines, I was so wired I couldn’t sleep, and my friend gave me like a .25mg, and it did the trick.” Slowly, when her parents’ marriage turned nasty— divorce proceedings underway, following allegations of domestic violence— Ananya started using the prescription sedative to sleep “during those times that they were really screaming the house down.”

Globally, drug use in young children has been related to stress, family conflict and academic pressures. Often, young people use substances as coping mechanisms. “Exposure within the home to violence increases stress. Substance use increases the risk in children with parental substance use,” says Dhawan. “Parental substance use reduces risk perception and behaviour may become more normalised,” she added.

Barriers to Detection and Support

Neither Sonu nor Ananya have any intention of seeking help. Only one per cent of young people who acknowledged substance use had attempted to get any formal support or treatment. Fear of stigma, a lack of mental health services in schools, and parental oblivion appear to be major barriers. When asked if he would go to a detox centre if it was free of cost, Sonu laughed: “Why would I need to go anywhere? I am young and enjoying myself. I am not doing anything wrong.” 

Ananya said she would not acknowledge any drug use if it were brought up in front of her parents or teachers. “They immediately become serious, like I am some addict. I am not,” she says quite sure of herself despite acknowledging that her Alprax usage has upped in the past year from .25mg to .5mg, which is the second highest dose. More than half of the students in the study admitted they deny substance use if directly asked, meaning that the chances of the rate of usage among kids could be much higher.

*Names of minors have been changed.