For a fifty-plus parent with similar aged kids, the social media conversations in the Aryan Khan matter have started making me realize that (at least) a part of human/Indian society has changed beyond recognition for my aging eyes. The most intriguing part is that this change is not because of the changed perspective to life but is actually stemming from a completely unrelated dimension, and that is the political narrative that is going around.

It is strange to see that political alignment has become the central pivot around which people are ready to stretch everything, including parental values.

If one approaches the Aryan Khan’s matter as a parent (and without any political opinion), he is a young son of a father and mother facing one immediate problem, i.e., arrest under Section 8(c), 20(b), 27 and 35 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (DPS), 1985.

We have to admit that these are very serious sections where the worst can actually be ten or even twenty years of imprisonment (under Section 20(b) ii (c) used for large scale drug traffickers caught with commercial quantity of contraband).

So, the arrest under these sections can give nightmares to any parent, as a parent is designed to fear for and fight the worst that is thrown at one’s child. But some deep breathing and right advice would suggest that the actual (though highly unlikely, considering the legal support available) worst could be a, at the most a year behind bars with a peanut of a fine.

The possibility of imprisonment for even a year of a child is a horror for any parent, but the truth is, by focusing on it, not just the parents but all those horrified by it on social media are missing another possibility that is even more horrible, and that is being an addict of psychotropic substances.

The biggest shock that has gone unnoticed in the case of Aryan Khan is normalization of addictive substances.

It is strange to read comments about “recreational use” as they indicate that there is a section in the society that is under the impression is that drug use is one of the things young kids indulge in before growing up into fine normal adults.

I see young kids and even young parents unable to relate to the fact that there is nothing called recreational use when it comes to even a cigarette or alcohol, and surely not if it is narcotics like cocaine, MD, charas or Ecstasy. There substances may have recreational effect, but they are just like Hotel California that you can check out anytime you want (that too, only if you have the will of steel and great family and support group) but you can never leave.

By watching the conversation around the Aryan Khan case, I can see that the anti-establishment paranoia has now gone to a level where everything is equated against image of the state that a section of society is harboring.

It is really a worrisome problem that Aryan Khan is talked about from the perspective of alleged injustice by the state while zero attention is given to the alleged possibility of drug use. There is a sad possibility that these conversations are actually destigmatizing drugs and making young kids think that drugs are fine. It is almost as if this case is giving drugs indirect social/parental acceptance though this debate.

Every parent needs to realize that the legal imprisonment, however long is of finite period, but if one’s child is addicted to drugs, that is a verdict of a life time, and of horror lot worse than the worst prison in the world.

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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