Today, an oversight committee spearheaded by the regional Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA-7) is supposed to evaluate the respective performances of the barangays in Central Visayas in the war against illegal drugs, and so far, there have been drawbacks as expected.
PDEA-7 Director Yogi Filemon Ruiz said some barangays in Cebu City had backslid after being declared “drug free” by their agency, and they will be held accountable for their performance.
The incentive for improving their performance, aside from having healthy and fewer crime-prone areas, is the seal of good housekeeping granted by the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) that is a requirement for raising their eligibility to a bigger share of the internal revenue allotment (IRA).
Every bigger slice of the pie, or in this case cash pie, is always welcome, and the drug campaign evaluation would be a periodic exercise that will keep barangay officials honest in a way and on their toes.
The evaluation comes amid Ruiz’s disclosure of new players in the drug trade who have replaced the likes of Alvaro Alvaro and the slain Jeffrey “Jaguar” Diaz as the big-name drug dealers in the region.
Ruiz knows for himself that the illegal drug trade won’t die with the detention or the deaths of suspected drug lords. Even behind bars, Alvaro managed to secure cell phones and contacts, and big money continues to flow inside the Cebu provincial jail and the Cebu City Jail based on the money transfer forms found by the raiding teams.
Ruiz tempered his announcement by saying the new players aren’t a threat just yet, but their presence may explain why the previously declared “drug-free” barangays have sprouted new drug users and pushers.
With the money still flowing even with the rising prices of an ever-constricted and dwindling shabu supply, some people in the mid-level to higher echelons of power are still benefiting from the drug money.
Though the Duterte administration’s attention had been diverted to the Marawi City siege, and the constant criticism of rights groups and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) may have led to the decline in the number of executions of drug suspects by mask-wearing vigilantes, we trust that the war on illegal drugs and drug syndicates isn’t watered nor bogged down by legal obstacles posed by the lawyers of these drug lords or any other circumstances.
We also hope that the PDEA and other law enforcement agencies would clip these new drug players and arrest them early so they won’t be like the hydra that regrows two more heads when one is cut off.
In the war on drugs, it’s important that the government shrinks and shuts down the market of users so the suppliers will eventually lose their customers and run out of business.
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