The war on illegal drugs needs a good strategy
We need to accept that we have no real strategy to address the illegal drug menace yet.
Dear Mr. President,
First off, I support the goals of your government from your 10-point program and the drive against illegal drugs and the damaging traffic mess. I want and will do my best as an individual citizen and as part of groups of equally motivated Filipinos to cooperate and collaborate in working for the achievement of the goals of these programs. We sorely need to be rid of the illegal drug trade and the debilitating traffic. AND we want the government to succeed with the 10-point agenda which has wealth generation and equitable distribution as the major considerations and that clearly includes eradicating corruption.
To be very clear, I disagree with some of the means that emerged in seeking out the eradication of the illegal drug trade. The extrajudicial killings stand out.
I also agree with the 1987 Constitutional provision that states that the death penalty may be justified in the case of heinous crimes, but we need a very good definition of heinous. We have asked for but have not gotten a response to our request that the proponents, e. g., Senator Emmanuel Pacquiao, define heinous crimes very carefully and strictly.
We have constantly asked for but never got a response regarding a clear strategy and program on how we shall handle all the very big challenges of the illegal drug trade. To be sure, police action has produced a marked decrease in overt illegal drug trading.
We are now faced with the immediate work of rehabilitating the millions of addicts amenable to rehabilitation. We need to see how government has segmented this huge number into sub-categories for better managing. The challenge has several aspects:
• We need to provide for the very, very large numbers of addicts that need only out-patient care and counselling. AS you rightly pointed out in several speeches, government cannot do it because it does not have the resources. We will therefore need the help of parishes, local social-civic organizations, and community organizations to set up out-patient rehabilitation programs. And many have responded but we still need much, much more. And the many volunteers will need extra funding. We need a program to generate that extra resource without resorting to government.
• We have to provide for the smaller but still very large numbers of addicts who can only be assuredly rehabilitated as in-patients. A kind Chinese national, with the best of intentions, had a behemoth facility that looks like a penitentiary built in far off Laur to where it is difficult to bring patients and those who need to visit them with regularity during their rehabilitation. We can see that from reports on how sparsely the facility has been occupied all these months after so many have been arrested or surrendered. The place is unattractive for the many professional staff needed to run the facility.
Much smaller rehabilitation centers, many of them, such as those run by private groups, closer to the communities they serve, and where it is not difficult to attract the needed professional staff of psychiatrists, nurses, and counsellors is what we will need.
• We need to handle with great sympathy the fewer but still large numbers of people beyond rehabilitation. No, I am not saying handle them with kid gloves. But need to exercise greater caution in apprehending and arresting them. We need to afford them the basic dignity of being treated as human beings in what is obviously the last leg of the lives’ very troubled journey. This has been the most bitterly criticized part of the current program. This will also mean, with the greatest respect, Mr. President that you need to change the way you have thought and spoken about them. I understand the anger and the frustration you feel. But it will not hurt you to temper yourself, sir. On the contrary, I think it will give many a different estimation of the Mayor Rodrigo Duterte who is now our President.
Mr. President, you have the official mandate, many of the powers needed, and the popularity to reach out to the many elements in our fractured nation. I also think that behind all the impatience and frustration that underpin the bravado and bluster is a perceptive person who can see the complexity and the complications of the illegal drugs challenge. We have witnessed your capacity to sit back, reach out, and talk with initially adverse parties and succeed many times. We need that capability to come out again and help bring us together. May we suggest some steps, sir?
First, we need to accept that we have no real strategy to address the illegal drug menace, yet. Second, we need to put together a multisector working group with powers to put together the needed strategy that needs to address the many components of this challenge.
So far what we have done is address mainly the lower half of the pyramid and mostly the base (the “Market”) composed of users, many of who are also pushers. We have gotten quite a bit of the gram-level pushers and a number of the kilo and bulk distributors. We destroyed a number of local manufacturing facilities (finding out to that they were built right under the noses of local officials who lacked sufficient curiosity as to what was being put up in their municipalities by strangers) but have not gotten most of the bulk importers. As you rightly said, the ruling cartel and the really big manufacturers may be out of our reach as they are not residing here. It is rumored, however, that some financiers may be local, in politics and associated with known illegal gambling/ jueteng syndicates.
The group can be funded by private sector associations and other good Samaritans who have stated they wish the illegal drug menace solved. These include business associations, church groups, social- civic organizations, rich individuals, and even the embassies of specific countries who have earlier expressed disagreements with what is being currently done. This group has its work cut out for them.
The group has to recommend, too, to you and the Cabinet what needs to be done to the two blocks beside the value chain, the “Protectors, Enforcers and Allies” and the “Influencers.” Together they form a value web that spreads far, wide and deep.
“Influencers” require that we examine closely our world views, attitudes, and habits — our culture really. We need to ask ourselves how our actions and inactions may have contributed to the spread of the use of illegal drugs, just as these may have led our youth to nicotine, alcohol and what we use to call “free love.”
To do these we will need the help of our social scientists and observers, spiritual and family counselors, and an array of writers who can help summarize for us the experiences of other societies and other countries so we may have good points of comparisons and contrasts.
As a last part, the group can have the programs laid out with greater detail and get professional managers lay these out in the kind of strategy paper and program implementation presentation most will be able to understand and follow.
We will require and spell out the costs involved in the form of monthly budgets tied to specific activities and prepare plans for generating the needed resources from multiple sources, private and public, local and global.
Mr. President, I think that if we are able to do this and lay it out for the world to see the Philippine plan, we will witness much, much less sniping and criticizing of the war we have declared, and we will get the global support we need.
Thank you for the attention, sir.