MANILA -- Overcoming drug addiction is possible if each and every Filipino cooperate to address the problem, Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Martin Andanar said Monday.
In his speech during the Rehabinasyon: The First National Anti-Drugs Summit in Davao City, Andanar cited the importance of cooperation from public and private sectors, stakeholders, and citizens, or a so-called “whole-of-nation” approach to helping drug dependents overcome addiction.
“It is my understanding that this program called the whole-of-nation approach intends to involve the immediate family and neighborhood community in addressing the rehabilitation and reformation of those personally and directly using, buying, and selling illegal drugs,” Andanar said.
“Consequently, when we honestly cared to assist the smallest unit in a locality, the ripple effect would be indeed encompass the whole of the nation,” he added.
Andanar acknowledged the process of overcoming addiction as a “tedious” one, especially because it involved people who do not know how or where to get help.
He, however, noted that there is much more than rehabilitating a drug dependent through the “regular routine of detoxifying procedures.”
“It is therefore imperative that our approach to the rehabilitation for addicts is not simply to put them in the centers altogether and for them to go through the regular routine of detoxifying procedures,” Andanar said.
“Every person needs to be individually counseled so the healing begins with the telling and the realizing of the pain…This is why indeed it takes the whole nation to be mindful of an approach as intense as this,” he added.
Spiritual healing
Andanar added that the importance of the Church and other religious sectors in helping drug dependents heal spiritually.
“While the body and the mind are taken care of by the private and public institutions in basic physical and social services for wellness and education, the care of the soul is in the hands of the spiritual leaders who must, because of their religious commitment, feed the hunger for spirituality and satisfy the need for purposeful life,” Andanar said.
“We must note the fact that those who have gone thorough rehabilitation are only temporarily reformed and many return to addiction with the vengeance, so to speak, when the need again arises. But those who have returned to God through the spiritual conversion of their souls are able to drop the habit of addiction instantly without compromise,” he added.
The PCOO chief, meanwhile, expressed hope that religious leaders “participate more aggressively” in helping drug dependents overcome addiction.
“The whole-of-nation approach is all of us. Singularly and collectively. May we truly be a nation that is whole again,” Andanar said.
Rehabinasyon was synthesized through the Dangerous Drugs Board’s presentation of the Philippine Anti-Drugs Strategy via Executive Order No. 66.
The summit gathered members of the Inter-agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD) and partner organizations, working together to eradicate the illegal drug problem and providing solutions to rehabilitate former drug dependents and reintegrate them as productive members of the society.
In November 2018, President Rodrigo R. Duterte directed the entire government to take an “active role” in the administration’s war against drugs.
Under Memorandum Circular No. 53, Duterte directed all government offices, agencies, and instrumentalities, including government-owned or controlled corporations (GOCCs) and state universities and colleges (SUCs) to take an active role in the anti-illegal drugs campaign.
"It is hereby directed that all government offices, agencies, and instrumentalities, including GOCCs and SUCs, to immediately mobilize their assets and take an active role in the government's anti-illegal drugs campaign, in accordance with their respective mandates,” the memorandum read.
The memorandum added that “the drug problem continues to degrade the moral fiber of society undermining the rule of law and has evolved as a national security problem.” (PNA)
