The comeback of the Philippine National Police in efforts to end the nation’s drug scourge should be met with utmost vigilance.
Supt. Reyman Tolentin of the Police Regional Office in Central Visayas said he believes this stage of the government’s “war on drugs” will be less bloody.
This, however, is not the first time police prognosticated anti-drug operations with fewer injuries and deaths.
The country’s police chief, Rolando de la Rosa vowed a less bloody crackdown in March.
Sadly, that vow turned out to be impotent.
In succeeding months, “drug war” corpses continued to pile up, including those of youngsters Kian de los Santos and Carl Angelo Arnaiz as well as those of casualties in fishy operations recently exposed by the foreign press.
Human rights advocates like Fr. Amado Picardal, an executive secretary to our Catholic bishops thus cannot be faulted for prophesying that “the spiral of violence is going to escalate” as the anti-narcotics drive is restored to the police, albeit with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency as lead government office.
President Rodrigo Duterte did not help with wry remarks that the Commission of Human Rights should prepare to fudge statistics and portray cops as butchers now that they are back in the fight.
The insinuation was a squandered opportunity to encourage lawful, human rights-sensitive police work for which a vast majority of Filipinos have called as reflected in surveys.
Watching law enforcers, takes greater importance in the face of the new front in their drug war that is combatting the spread of party drugs.
The goal of keeping people off these substances is noble and has our moral support. Yet we are apprehensive. Who could get injured or killed in operations against party drugs? The mostly young “you-only-live-once” or “yolo” crowd.
We urge greater police transparency about their working methods, and call on cops to publicly recommit themselves to their humane rules of engagement.
Winning against party drugs does not begin with a criminological or gunpowder approach.
It starts with education in good stewardship of one’s own life and in the crazy if not deadly consequences of party drugs (in the black market, the usual contents of the drug called ecstasy is replaced with lethal substitutes).
It starts with demystifying pure hedonism that has no other interest but to waste entire lives in exchange for fleeting moments of pleasure.
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