What to make of President Rodrigo Duterte’s pronouncement that Cebu is a hot spot for illegal drug activities?
For starters, the assessment is nothing new. The discovery of major shabu laboratories in Metro Cebu specifically Mandaue in the mid-2000s and former Cebu congressman Antonio Cuenco’s congressional exposé on the illegal drug activities in Cebu speak volumes about how entrenched the drug syndicates are in the province.
The latest evaluations by the Police Regional Office (PRO-7) and the regional Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA-7) are no less discouraging: about 90 percent of illegal drugs being delivered and the arrests made of either regular dealers or cops tagged as drug syndicate protectors in Central Visayas are in Cebu.
The campaign to clear the barangays of illegal drug activities, while producing some results, aren’t as significant as one might hope for: out of 1,000-plus barangays in Cebu, only 160 villages were declared drug free with no drug-free barangays in Cebu City.
As if that’s not enough, there were barangay officials recently arrested in the southern towns of Cebu, the latest being Barangay Chairman Johnny Arrisgado of Magsico, San Fernando town, along with town Councilmen Edwin Quijano Villaver and Alfonso Donaire who were accused of being drug protectors.
Despite these daunting figures, the President took recognition of the efforts made to deal with the drug menace by saying they had cleaned up Cebu a little. But apparently, these aren’t enough.
It’s instructive to note that the President made the assessment at a time when Supt. Marvin Marcos and 18 other police officers returned to active duty after serving a suspension in light of the death of Albuera mayor and suspected drug lord Rolando Espinosa Sr. inside a cell in November last year.
The President is known to get defensive and outright furious whenever someone, anyone, dares question his war on illegal drugs, and no one questions the lengths he would go to eradicate the menace, including securing pardons for police officers who summarily execute suspected drug dealers.
With the small headway achieved so far in the war against illegal drugs in Cebu, would an unsatisfied President Duterte find grounds to impose more stringent measures, including — God forbid — martial law in the province if only to eradicate the drug menace once and for all?
That would sound ludicrous, and the President may not even consider it as a possibility. But the enormity of the problem won’t discount that possibility regardless of how remote it may be for now. What is certain is that Cebu’s local officials and communities should fully cooperate with the police and the PDEA in rooting out the drug menace from the ground level, flushing them out without snuffing them out.
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