The use by young Filipinos of prohibited drugs like methamphetamine, crack cocaine, cocaine, opium and marijuana is now the country’s scourge. The abuse has reached epidemic, if not widespread, proportion, according to our unofficial sources in the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). And yet, the country’s national leadership is on a state of denial. Scions of affluent and/or influential families rarely face arrest and prosecution for drug abuse, as the country’s criminal-justice system is at the mercy of influence peddlers. Drug syndicates are able also to bribe some top Philippine civilian and/or military-police leaders to look the other way, if not share in the bounty (sic) of their nefarious activities.

This columnist wrote before about the immoral business of illegal-drug distribution in the Philippines. I wrote about “the (alleged) participation of certain Filipino military and/or police officers in the manufacture and distribution of illegal drugs in the Philippines and in allegedly providing support for the transshipment in Manila ports of the said drugs to the United States from certain Asian points of origin.” To read the earlier “Unsolicited Advice” article in its entirety, please click on this link:

It Is Time for Filipino Americans to Stop Playing “Mr. Nice Guy”

Even our columnist, former Board of Investments Governor Ben Sanchez, mentioned also the growing drug abuse in the Philippines. Please click on this link to read Governor Sanchez’s article, There Are Still “Filipinos who Dream of Something Better for the Philippines”

Last July 10th, the Philippine media reported the arrest of 11 high-school students who were caught doing a pot session in Quezon City. The arrest was further proof of the escalating national problem that is drug addiction. And the arrested students obviously came from the ranks of the financially-distressed families. They could not afford to hold the pot session in a luxurious hotel or a mansion-like residence or condominium in one of the metropolitan areas’ premier locations that some scions of well-to-do families reportedly do on a regular basis. The Quezon-City students held their drug session only in a “vacant lot.”

Yet, the national leaders of the Philippines are using scarce resources of the national treasury in funding foreign trips of the Philippine President and her entourage and even the travel of many Filipino congressmen to Las Vegas, Nevada, to watch a boxing bout. To read our satire of the congressional junkets to the world’s entertainment capital, please go to Defending Filipino Congressmen and Politicians Who See Manny Pacquiao’s Title Bouts in Vegas

The Filipino leaders must take seriously the business of governance, the issue of drug abuse, in particular, and the fundamental structural reforms for government functions, in general. At the rate things are going in the homeland, Philippine society may find itself someday in total stupor with many of the country’s youth acting like Zombies because of their drug dependence. By then Jose P. Rizal’s words that the “youth is the hope of the fatherland” may amount to an exercise in futility, if not frivolity.

Here are excerpts from GMANews.TV’s news report . . .

“Eleven high-school students caught in pot session

“07/10/2008 | 07:36 AM

“MANILA, Philippines - At least 11 high-school students were brought to a police station after they were caught smoking marijuana in a vacant lot in Quezon City Wednesday night.

“DZBB's Mao dela Cruz reported Thursday morning that the boys and girls, aged 14 to 17, were still in the first to fourth year high school.

“Quezon City police chief Sr. Supt. Magtanggol Gatdula said some of the students were even wearing uniforms of the Quezon City High School when they were caught in the pot session.

“Gatdula said the students were brought to Police Station 10 and would be turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

(Snipped) - GMANews.TV”  # # #

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