 Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about the consequences and causes of drug abuse in Pakistan. In the low segments of society, use of opium, bhang, hashish and alcohol was high during the 1960s if we talk about Pakistan. In 1983, there were only 5,000 hard drug addicts in Pakistan. The introduction of heroin, however, increased the drug addicts exponentially in Pakistan. And by 2002, 4.1 million drug users were reported. So if we talk about the causes of drug abuse in Pakistan. So we see that the drugs such as churros or marijuana can be related to seek excitement or maybe adventure or maybe out of trail. So one of the important factors in this regard is often considered the peer pressure that friends or the company of friends would offer you something like this that here you go you would find this out of the word experience so let's try them so be pretty much adventurous to that and only as an adventure a person would start taking the drug. But by the passage of time, you would become addict. The drugs are also used to relieve tensions, pains and forget about the frustrations. So it means that one of the justifications that is being provided by these drug addicts is that they went to the drugs out of their frustrations since they failed to achieve what has been desirable in the society since they failed to meet the social expectations. So out of their failure or to forget about their failure, they began to indulge in such kind of activities and one of the way out of your frustration was considered the drug abuse. The doctors also prescribe some drugs but this also considered the drug abuse based on the prescriptions or prescription drug abuse for the purpose of treating some pain or some other psychological diseases. The resultant state of euphoria is considered more enjoyable than the pain it is prescribed to relieve. So once the person becomes dependent on these drugs, he or she is more likely to continue consuming drug even when the symptoms for which this drug was prescribed has long disappeared. People use the drugs due to the different traumatic situations and poverty is also one of the contributing factors of drug abuse and lack of recreational opportunities can also lead to the drug consumption since people find themselves in the bad company and they are making them habitual to using drugs as one of the entertaining activity. Unemployment can also lead to drug addiction and similarly the most important one is the peer pressure that pushes one to the drug consumption and if we talk about the consequences or the impacts of the drug abuse, the foremost impacts that the drugs are making are on your health. It damages the immune system which increases the susceptibility to further infections. Cardiovascular conditions are becoming worse as you get more indulged into the drug addiction. It may include the heart attack and can collapse your veins. It can immediately produce the nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain and in the long run it can consequentially affect your liver and finally it can lead you to the liver failure. If we talk about its social consequences, it has a lot of dying social consequences like the loss of employment, the loss of relationship. We have observed in our society that those people who are completely drug dependent are usually abandoned by their families as well because they are more likely to spend more time with their own companies of drug addicts. So that is why their family usually abandoned them and then we have the incarceration because some of them are going to be engaged in the extreme kind of criminal activities. So they are put into the jail and financial troubles it creates because the more you are indulged into the drug activity the more you become drug dependent and then you don't care that from where the money come but only thing that you are conscious about is that how you are going to get that drug on which you are completely dependent. Homelessness becomes another factor because since when your family become disappointed with your situation that there is no way out for you to get out of this situation families usually abandon the drug addict and then he becomes the homeless person and from that homelessness he can further indulge into other criminal activities. One of them is to be engaged in the risky sexual behavior and there from there they can be contaminated to some sexually transmitted diseases. One of them is he can potentially become the victim of HIV AIDS might be through the injecting drug usage experience as well so he can equally become the transmitter of this disease to other people as well. So overall if you see that its causes and consequences are gigantic and sometimes unbearable not only for the individual himself but also for his family members as well.