Free shabu, hugs, and kisses

VICE President Leni Robredo enjoys the limelight that the media give her. The exposure, however, reveals her naiveté and ignorance about the menace of drugs, the networks of drug syndicates and how seriously we were pushed into being a narco-state by the tolerant Aquino administration. As a drug czarina, her ignorance makes her a dangerous person. Her claim that Duterte’s war against drugs moreover prompted the President to give her the opportunity to address the drug problems that beset the country even as we know that all the drug laboratories and nearly all the drug dens had been dismantled and the operators neutralized.

 

After all her flair and air, it turns out that she is hopelessly reliant on the US and not content with that wants the United Nations to also intrude. Alas the US Embassy sent everybody who is somebody they thought could help her and as expected offered VP Robredo their expertise and assistance.

 

Not that I doubt the capacity of the US to help but their ability to address monstrous drug problems and fighting drug cartels within its own borders and neighboring Mexico illustrate how much more or so little they can help in eradicating the remaining vestiges of drug problems we have. America has a lot of things to learn from us and no less President Trump articulated that.

 

Robredo does not want law enforcers to shoot members of drug syndicates in their anti-drug operations. This is indicative of what she must have learned from the US anti-narcotics campaign and Mexico’s approach to stopping the killings in the course of their strategy to address drug problems in their respective jurisdictions. In San Francisco, the government offers free laying-in centers and drugs to addicts in a district popularly referred to as “Tender Loin” district where drug addicts, pimps and homeless roam. `Opiates are accessible and on a daily basis, not a few victims die. And yes without a single shot. So bad, complex and worrisome the problem had become leading President Trump to declare it a national emergency.

 

Talking of failed war against drugs and drug cartels, therefore, we have two case studies: Mexico where just recently capitulated to the overwhelming forces of the drug cartel and freed leaders of drug syndicates that had been convicted and jailed. Smarting from ignoble defeat the Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared that it is changing strategy in dealing with the drug problem in the country by calling Mexico’s military and police forces back to barracks and declared “hugs not bullets” policy. In less than two weeks that followed an American family of seven, to include innocent children, were slaughtered by the cartel. Beyond the border, the US is helpless and hopelessness pervades in both Mexico and America.

 

And here is VP Leni Robredo talking and seeking advice and support from the US Embassy to help solve our drug problem. How Leni? Give addicts free shabu or withdraw our police forces and instead welcome the drug syndicates with hugs and kisses?