Expounding more on his plan to deal with the drug problem, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. said he will order his men to prioritize those who will “make a difference” in the drug trade.
“Now as to the enforcement, to put it very bluntly, I simply told them, (police) 'Look I’m not interested in the kid who makes P100 a week selling weed.' That’s not the person that I want you to go after... I want you to go after people who if we get them, if we neutralize them, or put them in jail, we put them away, whatever it is will make an actual difference," he said.
Let’s hope this doesn’t open another bloody chapter in the war against drugs, although this may not be the path he wants to take because he also acknowledged that the enforcement-centered approach of the previous administration “only got us so far” where the drug problem was concerned.
We also want to remind President Marcos of his previous statement to address the prevention problem of the drug menace; discouraging kids and other vulnerable sectors from getting into drugs in the first place. It’s time to put his money where his mouth is.
The allies of the previous administration may tout how much the violent drug war did for the country, but we can see evidence that not much has really changed. Drugs continues to proliferate.
Hauls of drugs seized usually now number in the millions of pesos, not just in hundreds of thousands. Just recently, dealers with P15 million worth of drugs were busted in Cebu City and Cebu Province.
We are ready for a new way to deal with the drug problem. But if this administration falls into the same trap the previous administration did when dealing with the drug problem --and only focus one those selling drugs instead of those using them we can only see the situation with the drug problem staying the same or even becoming worse.