COJUANGCO REUNION POST BUSAN

The government triumphantly promised free rehabilitation to the victims of
drug abuse, including the drug pushers.

Unfortunately, it did not spell out how this was going to be implemented.
Apparently, there is a lot of misunderstanding about the intricacies of drug
rehabilitation. It is not a one-shot deal. Nor a short-term process.

The late Constancio Legaspi could have told the experts that rehabilitation
is a tedious and, often, an expensive process, although the Drug Abuse Rehab
Center has already reduced the time for cure from six months to a maximum of
four years.

Drug Rehab center experts should explain the reality to our government
do-gooders. The government must be prepared to subsidize rehab centers with
enough funds to sustain their operations.

In the case of Bacolod City, the city government had cut down its subsidy to
the REACH to the point that the foundation is saddled with the task of
subsidizing the P3,000 per month minimum monthly bill of every resident.
That, truth to tell, is already below that livable upkeep. And, yet, many
still claim they could not maintain their dependents, thus exerting more
pressure on the foundation.

Now, the focus on drug rehabilitation should clearly make officials realize
the gravity of the challenge of helping the former dependents return to the
social mainstream. It is hard work. And, very often, expensive, although
admittedly the REACH has to ward off applicants from other areas drawn to
the cheap monthly bill.

Just an aside, perhaps, in tribute to the late Legaspi, long-time corporate
secretary of the foundation, the city government should restore its subsidy
to the foundation.

The elections are still far away, but almost daily the headlines carry
stories of survey results, candidates' ideas on how the country should be
run, exposes of shenanigans, and political maneuvers.

Hardly anybody really devotes time to analyzing what's wrong and what should
be done to arrests the crime rise.

Right now, the administration threatens to came up with the names of the
drug lords. But it seems they have overlooked the importance of human
rights. It is not enough that raw intelligence point out to somebody as the
source of drugs. What is needed is to file the charges against hem and to
gather the necessary evidence to send them to jail or the electric chair.

Newspapers run the risk of libel cases when they succumb to the lure of the
scoop by publishing the names sans proof. Or just the mere say-so of
official sources.

And PDEA seems to have latched on to a tack. Lumping together the petty
pushers with the users to create a picture of so many having been caught in
the anti-drug dragnet. But if one were to examine those arrested, there is
hardly anybody who could qualify to be a big one.

And, yes, the very big ones managed to go scot free. Either by getting freed
on technicality, or by walking out of their jails.

The government must be able to come up with a more solid performance to be
able to convince the public that it is really sincere in the anti-drug
drive.