Punjab has a serious opioid problem. The most careful study, the Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey of 2015, conducted by AIIMS with the state government, estimated about 232,000 opioid dependent people and about 860,000 opioid users in the state, overwhelmingly male, with a median age in the late twenties.
That is a large number and it is not the number usually quoted. Figures of seventy per cent of Punjab's youth, which circulated widely in national media and in film, have no basis in any survey and were repeatedly attributed to a study that did not say it.
The substances have changed over time, from natural opium and poppy husk, which were traditionally used and legally sold until the 1980s, to heroin and to pharmaceutical opioids.
The state runs OOAT clinics, outpatient opioid assisted treatment, with a large registered caseload. Treatment access is better than in most Indian states and relapse is high.
The exaggeration matters. It has been used to characterise a whole population, it shaped how Punjab was talked about nationally for a decade, and it made the actual problem harder to discuss with any precision.
The substances have changed over time: from opium and bhukki, culturally embedded and rurally tolerated, to synthetic opioids and heroin coming across the border.
The scale is argued about. Government surveys, academic studies and journalism give different numbers and the most quoted figures are the least reliable ones.
What is not argued is that the treatment infrastructure is inadequate, that the enforcement falls on the courier and the user rather than the trade, and that every political party has promised to end it.