NARCO-POLITICS

WAR, as Clausewitz said, is politics by other means. So is the government's
anti-drug war, as nipped-in-the-bud "czars" Sen. Robert Barbers and former
Mayor Alfredo Lim have found out. The word is "narco-politics."

There's no reason to doubt the President's earnestness about the anti-drug
war. The obscurantism surrounding it is not of her making. It was there from
the beginning.

The truth is that drug trafficking in this country had been nurtured by the
usual suspects until it grew to alarming proportions. There's even the
suspicion that some of the initiators--and enforcers-- of the anti-drug
campaign did it for reasons other than civic.

No wonder that when politicians involve themselves in the anti-drug
campaign, the public waxes skeptical, for it suspects that a fund-raising,
or vote-getting, gimmick. There's nothing wrong, however, with vote-getting
gimmicks--if they produce desirable results.

However, what you usually get are brochures and lectures. "Just say No" and
that, for the most part, is it.

The statistics speak for themselves. More drug-users than pushers have been
apprehended; of the latter, none were key people in the illegal trade. It's
convenient for some police authorities to say that drug-users are also
pushers, leaving the real traders, who shun their own commodity, safe.

Confiscated drugs found their way into the market. No "big fish" landed
where they belong.

No distinction has been made among the various illegal drugs, making
marijuana, for example, as menacing as heroin and shabu. This affords
opportunities to crooked narcotics agents.

Conspiracy theorists believe that it's the drug lords themselves who are
manipulating the anti-drug campaign, thus converting an earnest war into a
confusing war among the "warriors" themselves.

The consequence is intramural squabbles in government in comparison to the
unity of the drug traffickers, for you don't hear about drug wars, unlike in
other countries where the drug lords fight to the death for territorial
dominance.

PGMA is concerned, not least because her own province, like other provinces,
is awash with drug-users and pushers.

Indeed, when you open a can of worms, you see worms.

This is one problem that needs a Summit.