There is blood in our hands
There is no way we can be blameless on the current war on drugs—specifically on the death of innocent parties who never even tried to know what illegal drugs are all about.
We are indeed in a state of war. The more than 100 thousand of surrenderees in a matter of weeks attest to this. As in any other war whether by Christians or members of other faiths, some people will have to be killed. Some innocent civilian casualties would be incurred, as some had already been incurred in our case. These are painful to anybody with ordinary human heart. But where are we in all this.
The illegal drugs problem had been going on for decades and decades. Had there been a strong public sentiment or concerted effort to curb this through negative and positive ways, we would not be in this war.
There was none. A case in point that could have been replicated everywhere are the women of Bontoc, Mountain Province. Seeing that the social health and virility of their community was eroding so fast, they took it upon themselves to enforce a curfew ordinance in the town requiring the closure of pubs and other night spots at 10:00 p.m. every night. You hear them at that hour going around in droves to see to it the ordinance is being honored and their community is not getting drowned by alcoholic drinks and the other vices that thrive in seedy places late at night.
Responsible citizens of every barangay could have done that and even more. Shame campaigns could have been waged or the more positive way of getting those reputed to be “addicts” to get some psychological or psychiatric counseling. We could also have gone further. We could have arranged or raised funds for such counselors to be readily available.
We could have also pestered our politicians to allot more funds for rehab centers and to sponsor wholesome activities to keep the youth or the people in general away from drugs. Sports and other activities peppered with informal information dissemination on the evils of drugs could have greatly helped. In this connection, the required facilities like gymns, rinks and arenas should have been considered priority—but we never raised a howl to make these so.
And so we feel bad at the ongoing killings and we curse or make a lot of fuss and point our forefingers to Du30 and company. But we forget more of our fingers are pointed to ourselves.**
