Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Director General Isidro Lapeña (second from left) with Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino (center) and Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) officers talk to PDEA-7 Regional Director Yogi Filemon Ruiz during a visit to Cebu this week. Lapeña challenged Cebu City barangay captains to be serious in fighting illegal drugs by identifying drug personalities operating in their respective areas. (CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON)
THERE appears to be no gray area as far as the administration’s anti-drug campaign is concerned vis-à-vis the support for it expected from barangay captains.
According to Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Director General Isidro Lapeña, barangay captains who refuse to cooperate in the campaign will be viewed as drug protectors.
“I hope our barangay captains will be cooperative. Otherwise, they will be deemed as protectors (of drug personalities),” Lapeña said in a meeting with the Cebu City Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) on Thursday.
“It will be in the barangays where the success of our campaign against illegal drugs depends. It is our barangay officials who fully know the persons who are peddling or using illegal drugs,” he said.
The Cebu City barangay captains agreed to address the city’s drug problem hand in hand with PDEA as Lapeña called on them to be proactive in the Duterte administration’s fight against illegal drugs.
Lapeña met the village chiefs during a capability enhancement seminar organized by the ABC Cebu City and PDEA at the Grand Convention Center.
Lapeña told barangay captains to determine whether the drug users in their areas could be part of a community-based drug rehabilitation program or be confined at drug rehabilitation facilities.
PDEA not only wants to reduce the supply of illegal drugs but the demand from drug pushers and users through a massive information campaign on the ill effects of prohibited drugs.
ABC Cebu City President and Tisa Barangay Captain Philip Zafra said that they were “enlightened” by the meeting with Lapeña and vowed that ABC would do its best to clear the villages of illegal drugs.
Also, Zafra said the ABC in Cebu City plans to have an Anti-Drug Summit with PDEA-7 to intensify its programs against illegal drugs.
“If we block the market, then money could hardly go to the drug lords,” he said.
Cebu City has a total of 80 barangays. So far, not one village in the city has been declared drug-free.
Last January, the Office of the Ombudsman – Visayas slapped a six-month preventive suspension order against Ermita Barangay Captain Felicisimo “Emok” Rupinta and seven village councilors.
The suspension was ordered following a complaint by PDEA-7 against the Ermita officials’ alleged failure to cooperate with the anti-narcotics group during a drug raid last November.