Big Sinners: Tracing Substance Addiction from the West to East Through Tourism

People have long sought to control and harness the power vested in drugs. Said power is both real and imagined. Drug policy capitalizes on its “imagined power” by constructing social and political narratives about drug addiction. Sometimes these narratives are fair, based on evidence, and support individuals facing substance use disorders. Other times, they are misleading, corrupted, or misrepresentative of the actual “drug problem”. When defined outside the context of their environment and identity, drug users must relinquish agency over how their life is conceived and acted upon. Further, when drug use is defined in misleading to incorrect terms, individuals, organizations, and governments struggle to establish efficient solutions. In India, current rehabilitation and recovery methods are ineffective, often perpetuating harm inflicted on the individual. While many Indian citizens are punished or dehumanized for drug use, some regions of the country intentionally sustain drug cultures through drug tourism. These areas provide individuals with an alternative and temporary reality where drugs are prevalent, but their social associations are not. Through dissolving the problematic, illicit, or deviant assumptions tied to drug use, the destination and habits of the people adopt an “imagined” center. Drug tourism does this efficiently and with lasting harm to local individuals who begin selling or using drugs themselves. Due to the inhumane and ineffective condition of drug treatment and rehabilitation centers within India, drug tourism creates a perpetual cycle of criminalization and abuse for locals. However, this problem rarely affects tourists. The distinction between drug use at home, for locals, and drug use on holiday, for tourists, rests on the individual's privilege to leave. If drug policy is determined by movement, the overwhelming understanding of drug use, misuse, and recovery is not only flawed but inherently unjust. A comparison between India’s rehabilitation infrastructure and tourism within the Parvati V alley reifies an abhorrent contradiction in India’s drug policy and actuates a call for change.