The arrest of couple Leemuel Ivan Toleza Abenoja and Hazel Rose Nacario Dabatas by agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) near the Gaisano Capital South in Leon Kilat Street, Cebu City last July 10 was significant not just on a local level.
For one thing, they sold P4-million worth of shabu to a poseur buyer for the supposed reason that they wanted to pay the cost of their wedding. But their arrest, while yet another good job by the Philippine police, seems to be a drop in the bucket in the larger, global war against crime.
By this we refer to the escape of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman from his maximum security prison in Mexico a few days ago through an underground tunnel that US authorities considered to be a technical marvel in itself.
Guzman’s escape highlighted the controversial statements of businessman Donald Trump about Mexican immigrants being drug peddlers, and in fact, a Twitter account credited to Guzman supposedly threatened the billionaire for his scathing remarks.
This international incident reverberates at home with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) airing their concern over reports that drug money may be used as funding by politicians who have been stripped of their pork barrel funds for next year’s elections.
Abenoja and Dabatas, both Cebu City residents, are but two of a myriad number of people entangled in the global drug trade simply because they wanted a better life free from material concerns.
Drug lords like Guzman seek to profit from their desperation to build themselves empires and to become powerful themselves without accountability and without concern for those who’ve suffered from their trade.
As seen by these developments, the public knows by now that dealing with the drug menace involves practically a lot of fronts.
From indigent families wishing to earn money for their livelihood to addicts who’ve found little hope of overcoming their addiction, to drug peddlers of the local and international kind who are in real positions of power to shape and challenge governments, there are few social ills so encompassing as the drug menace.
But impossible as it may seem, the drug trade can be beaten if communities care enough and take the war to these criminals right on their doorsteps.