EDITORIAL - Tough choices for Bohol

Bohol is finding itself in a very difficult situation. A rash of violence and resulting deaths involving shooting incidents between police and illegal drug personalities is painting a picture of Bohol far different from the image of peace and beauty it has worked so hard to attain. And it could not have come at a worse time as the province has not yet fully recovered from the devastating earthquake that struck it last year.

That the rash of violence is occurring, and the fact that illegal drugs seem to be at the heart of each one, cannot but tell us that Bohol has a serious drug problem. How the problem got to this point, only the concerned authorities in the province can say. What cannot be argued is the fact that unless the province of Bohol strives mightily to lick the problem, any dream of it recovering its lost glory will be dim indeed.

Had the earthquake not happened, it would have been easy for anyone to sweep the drug problem under the rug. After all, if the economy is booming and a big part of the population is in on the boom, one is tempted to take the warts along with the rosy cheeks and not pay particular mind to the blemish. But the earthquake knocked most everybody down. If you need to get up, illegal drugs cannot provide the crutch to help you stand.

But Bohol faces some very tough choices. It knows it needs to make its tourism industry recover from the earthquake. Tourism, after all, is its golden egg. But to make it recover, it needs to paint Bohol once again as an island paradise of beauty and peace. The dilemma is how to do so when the drug problem that used to be swept under the rug unnoticed because of those golden years of tourism has finally broken cover and reared its ugly head.

For once the drug problem in Bohol has come to compete with all the positive news about the island. It cannot be ignored anymore. It is there on center stage. Bohol needs to seize the bull by the horns. It must wage a war of attrition against the drug menace and never mind if news about the drug war may tend to portray Bohol as a drug war zone.

If it chooses to take this course, Bohol can be sure that it will have a toll on its image of beauty and peace. But the gains will be immeasurable and more long lasting. If it pursues the course seriously and aggressively, its chances of licking the problem will be greater. And if it succeeds, its success will be its own chief promoter and advertiser of the island.

But if Bohol chooses the easy way out, which is to take the problem lightly or worse, pretend that it does not even exist, then not only will it eventually lose its golden egg of tourism, it will also be throwing away to the winds the future of all coming generations of Boholanos. No earthquake can be more terrible than that which kills the future of the young.

So while Bohol still has a great fighting chance, its authorities and all its leaders must band together to take a common stand against a common enemy, an enemy that while proven to be very difficult to beat, has in fact also been proven to be capable of being beaten. Boholanos have only two sides to choose from -- on the side of illegal drugs, or on the side of their beautiful and peaceful island home province.