[MENTION=139386]Jin Chacha[/MENTION] has nailed it. There's a lot of exaggeration here about how common and open alcohol use in Pakistan is. There's still a huge stigma and people usually keep it all hush hush so most of it goes on behind closed doors and even then only a small minority indulges. I can't speak for the whole country but up in my neck of woods(Peshawar/Islamabad), if you randomly pick a hundred people from across various social and educational backgrounds, chances are that no more than twenty to twenty five of them would be drinkers.
Drug use is a completely different issue and the use of the catch-all term 'drugs' is itself problematic because it lumps very different substances into one category which obscures a lot of the finer details. By far the most commonly used "drugs" in Pakistan are hashish/marijuana and heroin.
Hashish is a benign substance with very low potential for dependence(9% of long term users or something ridiculous like that) and few, if any, serious health related side effects. It's easily available and very common. If we repeat the random people experiment from the alcohol example, the number of users would be anywhere from 50(Islamabad) to 70(Peshawar). Personally, I'm all for legalization and make no excuses about my own use of the substance even to my family(it helps that my sister is a doctor who can talk some sense into them when they irrationally oppose it).
Heroin is a different beast altogether and it's one of the most serious threats facing Pakistani society. Pakistan has, by most accounts, the highest or second highest number of heroin being an unheard of substance in most of Pakistan 35 years ago. The massive rise in heroin use has also contributed to a soaring rate of incidence of AIDS, again from a very low base(40000 recorded cases in 1994 out of a population of 110-120 million).
When I was in South Punjab, there were about 50-60 people in our field office(almost from the Islamabad office) comprising Punjabis, Pukhtuns, Seraikis and Urdu speakers from various social classes and education levels. Since most were away from home, they had all the freedom to drink or smoke to their heart's content since the bosses were OK with it as long as it was after hours. An environment like this provides a good idea of who's into what since they're free to do as they please and have no fear of being exposed or chastised. Out of those 50 odd people, about 15 to 20 smoked hashish, two people did harder drugs(one did opium but very rarely, the other did cocaine, again, very rarely) and only two people drank, three if you count me but I don't usually drink unless someone has already set everything up since I don't enjoy it. Ironically enough, one of the guys who drank(and the one who'd usually procure alcohol) was a card carrying member of a certain proscribed organization and an extremist to end all extremists while the other was a Hafiz with some uncomfortable views about sectarian issues. Now in an environment where it was practically legal with no repercussions, three people out of fifty drank, ten to fifteen smoked hashish and two did harder drugs but only occasionally and this, in my experience, is fairly representative of the overall situation in Pakistan.
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