Abstract

Background: Street children have a greater burden than other poor children who are supervised by adults. The inherent dangers of being in the street situation, economic deprivation and lack of adult protection and inadequate socialization etc., make them extremely vulnerable. Many street children are involved in harmful use of psychoactive substances which can lead to increase the chance of accidents, violence, unwanted pregnancy and unprotected sex. The sad part is that there is paucity of reliable data on street children in Jammu and Kashmir. Material and Methods: 80 street children were chosen after mapping potential sites in urban Jammu using purposive and snowball sampling and were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. Results: Majority of the children studied were “children on the street” with a higher proportion of females representing the sample. The mean age of boys and girls was 12.18 (2.62) and 11.35(2.28) years, respectively. A wide variety of the substances were zeportedly abused by nearly half of the children studied (46.25%). A very high proportion of males reported substance abuse as compared to females (84.8% versus 15.2 % respectively). Cigarettes and Pan Masala were chief substances abused by the children studied (10% each). Conclusion: The phenomenon of drug abuse is rampant among street children. Easy availability of these substances is one of the reasons reported which needs to be looked into while devising policies for street children.