The circumstances behind the death of suspected drug pusher Wilson Villanueva in Toledo City last Sunday would have been just another item in a growing list of police stories about the war against drugs were it not for the involvement of a girl and her mother..
Villanueva was dubbed “Pretty Boy” by the police and his cohorts. But there was nothing pretty about his looks or about the fact that he ended up the live-in partner of an underage girl after setting up a shabu den in her home.
“Their relationship was on and off. But she kept coming back to the suspect since he provides her drugs,” said SPO1 Reynaldo Solante of the Toledo City police.
The family life was far from ideal.
Her German father and mother were having their marriage annulled. She and her mother were scrambling for support.
Perhaps this partly explains the mother’s alleged tolerance of the relationship of her daughter, who had dropped out of school, and Villanueva.
If Villanueva had survived the police operation against him, he would have had to answer not just for shabu pushing, but for exploitation of a minor.
Last we heard, the German father came over to attend to his daughter, who was taken into custody by social welfare workers.
But the damage is there.
If police reports are true about her drug habit, she would need rehabilitation as well as counselling for her disjointed family life.
It’s easy to blame poverty for a downward spiral similar to what the minor experienced.
But there are other families with more meager means who find ways to raise their offspring without abandoning them to adult criminal fiends.
The drug menace exists in nearly every town and city of Cebu island now.
But reports of drug dealing in Toledo City have been particularly consistent, and getting worse.
The problem belongs to the community, not just law enforcers to address and tests the effectiveness of local leadership.
We’re not advocating Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte’s receipe of lynching every suspected drug dealer, but a strong, we-mean-business approach is needed to send a clear signal that illegal drugs is not a welcome enterprise in Toledo City.
The police dispatched one suspected pusher last Sunday. The impact of narcotics is still destroying families. It will take a determined community to ensure that youngsters are not at the mercy of drug operators as vendors or hell’s version of a boyfriend.