Unique war with drugs

Last week, Philippine officials started aiming a new weapon against drug pushers in Manila –– spray paints. Accompanied by top police officers, Interior and Local Governments Secretary Alfredo Lim painted warnings on two houses of known drug peddlers in the city that read, “Stay away, drug pusher inside.”

A few days later, Marikina, a small laid-back city in metropolitan Manila also unleashed its own unique anti-drug campaign. The city started regulating the entry of non-residents in neighborhoods, where known drug pushers live. Initially, two neighborhoods were posted with signs labeling the areas as drug-risk areas. Local officials, backed up by police, set up tables on the entryways of streets to log, screen and frisk visitors. The idea is to discourage outsiders from visiting to buy drugs.

Many Philippine mayors are following suit. One metropolitan Manila mayor, Joey Marquez, is adopting a slight variation of Lim’s spray painting. Instead of painting warnings on houses, he plans to paint appeals on public walls and streets near the house of a drug pusher. The appeals would read, “Have mercy on others.” If the resident is a drug dependent, the appeal would read something like, “Have mercy on yourself.”

The spray-painting and drug quarantines actually were first practiced and legalized in the two cities in 1997. They were recently revived to add zest to a high-profile national anti-drugs campaign ordered by President Joseph Estrada.

In a country where many are hyper-sensitive to threats to civil liberties, the practices immediately drew criticisms and protests. Suits were filed to challenge the ordinances that legalized the campaigns. Debates started on television and over the radio. In the end, the orchestrators were smiling over the raucus, thinking they have delivered the blow necessary to knock many Filipinos off their indifference to the alarming spread of the drug menace in the Philippines.

The problem, actually, has reached alarming levels. Methamphetamine hydrochloride, locally called “shabu” and one of the most abused substances in the country, for example, is used by an estimated 1.7 million people out of a population of 74 million. The Philippines has become one of the world’s leading producers of marijuana, which is widely cultivated in remote northern and southern regions by farmers who had abandoned cheap crops like rice and corn.

Aside from its internal drugs problem, the Philippines has also become a transshipment point for drugs originating in Asia and destined to the United States and Europe. Late last year, police arrested a group of Chinese men who were attempting to smuggle drums of shabu into a sleepy northern coastal village.

For Lim, a feared former Manila police chief due to his tough methods, the end justify the means. He has suggested many times that he would not hesitate to violate the rights of criminals to safeguard the rights and future of law-abiding citizens. Predictably, he has become the punching bags of human rights and left-wing groups.
Recently, a group of activists gave him a dose of his own medicine. Armed with spray paints, the activists held a noisy protest in front of Lim’s office that culminated with the activists painting red warnings on the steps to Lim’s office. The signs read, “Warning, human rights violator inside.”

Many Filipinos, exasperated by crimes, support Lim’s harsh methods. But an equally large number of people are turned off by his social experiments bordering on strongman tactics. Critics, for example, say that the spray painting campaign violates the rights and puts to shame even innocent people living in a house, where drug dealers reside. Some say even the houses of convicted drug dealers should not be subjected to such indecent treatment because the Philippine constitution has declared every home sacred and the justice system has laid out specific punishments for drugs offenders which does not include vandalizing their homes.

The conflicting opinions are an interesting commentary on the Philippines’ long and difficult battle with crimes.