EJKs won’t solve drug problem

The Catholic faithful or those who still believe in the Church’s position against extrajudicial killings and the death penalty, can mark Feb. 18, 4 a.m. as the date for the Walk For Peace, an activity to be held in Manila to dramatize the Church’s position against the ongoing war on drugs by the Duterte administration.

The rhetoric used by the Catholic Church leaders in denouncing the continued deaths of drug suspects may have either run dry for those who adamantly support the government’s relentless and oftentimes ruthless approach to dealing with drug suspects, but there have been marked changes.
For one, the Philippine National Police arrested a few suspects they believe to be responsible for the spate of extrajudicial killings in Luzon. While this

may still be insufficient for some, it remains to be seen how far their investigation into this group will result in a decline in these EJKs.
The other indicator is that President Rodrigo Duterte adopted the public shaming approach of his PNP chief Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa by castigating the police officers who took advantage of drug suspects as well as engaged in minor extortion of vendors and traffic violators.

The cleansing process is all well and good but we hope the administration doesn’t stop with just sending the bad eggs to Mindanao and cracking down on suspected vigilantes.

For sheer dramatic emphasis, it would be significant if they actually arrest these vigilantes in the act of killing their targets. But then the suspicious among us would suspect this to be just a setup in order to clear the administration and get them off the hook from the allegations that it ordered the executions and kept it off their books.

There is more to be done to cut the root of the drug problem, and while the Church is right when it said that drug addiction is a mental illness that needs healing, the government should also uproot poverty which had continually exposed the community to the temptation of acquiring easy money through social evils like drug trafficking, addiction and cyber pornography.

The continuing flow of drugs from the supplier down to the users along with the decision by local suppliers to develop their own “yellow shabu” that is more potent and dangerous goes to show that desperate people whose brains were already addled with drugs and whose livelihood and survival hinges on their profit from selling it will find ways to sustain the illegal drug trade.

Murder alone whether sanctioned or a result of police operations won’t stem the tide of illegal drugs into the country. Only when people refuse to use or sell drugs because they have more than enough reason not to do so will permanently cut off the illegal drug trade and render them obsolete.