Five years of toll-free helpline initiative to deal with addiction in India: Current state and scope of integration and expansion

To the Editor, To tackle the pertinent issue of rampant drug use, Government of India, through the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (nodal ministry for drug demand reduction) launched Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan (Drug-Free India Campaign) on August 15th, 2020, across 270 districts, and a year later, a website was launched to facilitate its execution and a mobile app too.[1] Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyan website offers lot of features for the visitors as in to take an e-pledge for this drug-free India campaign and provides a certificate for it, and similar pledge can be taken by recovered drug users. A Drug Deaddiction National Toll-Free Helpline number (14446) is also being provided and a dashboard is available where details of those call records are accessible, which can be filtered district-wise, state-wise, and date-wise, with different figures and graphs giving insights into the program.[1] The dashboard also provides real-time, district-wise, and state-wise analytics of the helpline calls. It also provides a redirecting link for the Narcotics Control Bureau - MANAS website to report a crime related to drug use.[1] By the end of 2nd week of June 2025, more than 157 million people reached for help using the helpline, out of which more than 52 million were youth and above 33 million were women.[1] As per the available information in the dashboard of Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyan website, majority of calls received to the toll-free number related to addiction were mostly related to alcohol use or other drug uses, and counseling services were mostly provided to habitual alcohol users.[1] However, the information about repeat calls, unique users, and website visitors are not available, which may make the analysis of the call numbers subject to misinterpretation. As per the National Family Health Survey-5,[2] the prevalence of tobacco use among more than 15-year-old men and women were 38.0% and 8.9%, respectively.[3] As per a landmark survey on substance use, alcohol and cannabis are the top two most commonly used substances after tobacco in India.[4] While substance use is well known in the domain of addiction, newer forms of addiction have risen in the recent past, digital or Internet or technology addiction being one of them. With the quick evolving science and the extent of Internet use in our daily lives, it is of paramount importance to have a check on it, and thus, management of Internet addiction seems quite vital. As per a recent systematic review and meta-analysis, the prevalence of Internet addiction (irrespective of its severity) in India is 58.34%.[5] Excessive Internet use is associated with psychological issues, sleep problems, and risky behavior among the youth.[6,7] Government of India has already taken good initiative with the launch of Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyan, but as of now, only the substance use domains are included in it; we think it will be quite optimal to include behavioral addictions like Internet addiction in it too as it will be of immense help for people suffering from it and trying to seek help and even for those who are not aware of what even amounts to such addiction. The burden of behavioral addictions like Internet addiction is much larger than that of substance addiction and their psychological impacts are also significant. Individuals with Internet addiction and their close ones are less likely to seek medical and psychiatric help due to low level of awareness. Hence, creating awareness and popularizing the toll-free number by expanding it for behavioral addiction as well, will extend the benefit to a larger population. Authors’ contribution 1st Author: Literature search, manuscript writing, and manuscript editing. 2nd Author: Conceptualization, literature search, manuscript writing, and manuscript editing. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.