On seizures, the trend is unambiguous: heroin intercepted at the Punjab border rose from about 283 kg in January–September 2024 to 415 kg in the same period of 2025, and over 850 kg in January–September 2026 — a threefold jump in two years. Opium seizures rose from 12–16 kg to 44 kg, weapons from about 200 to 261. Punjab Police's 15-month campaign claims 2,950 kg of heroin, 792 kg of opium and 55 lakh intoxicant pills seized overall, and Punjab accounts for 58% of India's heroin seizures. NDPS cases registered in the state rose from 6,909 in 2020 to 12,442 in 2022.
On addiction, honesty requires a warning label. The AIIMS National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre's 2015 Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey estimated 232,000 opioid-dependent people and up to 860,000 opioid users in the state — opioids only, a point its lead investigator stressed after politicians misquoted it. The 2018 national survey (released 2019) estimated 21.36 lakh current opioid users — 9.91% of adults aged 18–75 — alongside 30.68 lakh cannabis users. These figures measure different things, in different years, with different methods. All predate the current enforcement surge and the synthetics shift. None should be treated as current — and any headline that quotes one without its year and definition is misleading you.
Rising seizures can mean more drugs flowing, better enforcement, or both at once. They cannot, by themselves, tell you the size of the market — no agency in India publishes a reliable flow estimate. Awaaz Punjab will always print the seizure number with its period and source, and never as proof the trade is shrinking or growing.