City’s drug rehab program has very low awareness rate

DRUG rehabilitation effort of the city government of Davao for drug reformists has a very low awareness rate from the Dabawenyos at 4.63 percent, showing that people are more aware of the enforcement side rather than of the rehabilitation initiatives of the current administration.

Dr. Adrian Tamayo, executive director of the University of Mindanao (UM) Institute of Popular Opinion (IPO), said that people are less familiar of the Davao City Anti-Drug Abuse Council (Cadac), the body designated to implement program on anti-drugs in the grassroots level to complement the aggressive campaign of the national government against illegal drugs.

“The drug-related program is more on the law enforcement, it’s not more on the rehabilitation and people are thinking if the PNP (Philippine National Police) are doing it, Pdea (Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency) are doing it. They seldom know about Cadac. Few people know about Cadac,” Tamayo said.

He said the rehabilitation is on the secondary level instead of the forefront thus, there is also the tendency not to access the service.

The survey was conducted last October 11 to October 21 on 1,200 individuals (5 percent margin of error and 95 percent confidence level), where the surveyed were asked to rate from 1 to 10 their awareness of various services of the city government, where 10 is the highest.

It showed that drug rehabilitation is among the least familiar services of the government with 4.63 awareness and 3.11 accessibility. According to him, the two have correlation because the less familiar a program is, the less likelihood that it will be availed of.

“It’s at the backside not forefront. This is the time the CADAC should be at the forefront and play a signifi-

cant role because it’s more on enforcement the nature of addressing the drug problem,” he said.

Cadac should also be proactive on updating who are those who availed the services, the surrenderees and their status.

“The Cadac is still its formative stage not yet nakaarangkada. So we may expect next year or in two years’ time that the balance would change. It would be more rehabilitation and less on the enforcement. That’s the kind of understanding our Dabawenyos have relative to drug abuse problem,” he added. JCR