The Meghalaya Cabinet on January 12, 2023, passed the Drug Reduction Elimination & Action Mission (DREAM). The vision of the targeted mission is to build a “Drug-free Meghalaya” that leverages culture and communities through a multifaceted coordinated strategy to eliminate the incidence of substance use in the state.
The policy is part of a holistic and sensitive public health approach adopted by the State for improving health indicators. DREAM’s Mission Mode Plan aims to augment current efforts and address critical areas. To sustain the Mission, the strategy involves three dimensions to ensure that it achieves its objectives: Social Mobilization, Setting up of enabling support systems and Drug Regulation Law Procedure. The Mission Mode Plan proposes a Comprehensive Action Plan with specific deliverables to strengthen and identify the gaps to address drug addiction.
As part of the Meghalaya State Health Policy launched in May 2021, the State is adopting a holistic lifecycle approach for encouraging preventive and promotive healthcare, along with upholding the curative and enabling dimensions. As part of the lifecycle approach of the State Health Policy, Drug Reduction Elimination & Action Mission (DREAM) has been built upon the existing Drug Abuse Prevention Policy, 2020.
This is an effort by the State Government towards providing the youth with greater capabilities and opportunities to realize their potential, rather than falling into debt trap activities. The mission further aims to maximize the youth potential by establishing a Student Police Cadet wing that will effectively utilize & enhance their capability and deter them from engaging in at-risk behaviour.
Research has also indicated a correlation between tobacco use and the consumption of additional drugs. Therefore, the mission will build on already-existing initiatives like the Tobacco Free Educational Institutions (ToFEI) program to guarantee that low-risk habits do not escalate into more dangerous addictions. The mission intends to utilize relevant international standard assessment tools to validate and determine the threshold of harmful use and dependence among users of various substances.
