Mayor admits past as illegal drug user
BAYUGAN CITY—Take it from a former drug addict: Shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride) won’t do any good to your life.
Mayor Kim Lope Asis surprised everyone gathered at the city gymnasium here on Monday when he announced before more than 1,000 confessed drug peddlers and users, who surrendered to the police, that he used illegal drugs in his youth.
Asis, 41, said he was sent to a drug rehabilitation center several times in the past because of his addiction. As a young man, he said, he was his parents’ source of headaches. His parents were longtime mayors here.
Asis, however, said he managed to change his ways.
“I did not see any good thing that shabu could bring to our lives,” he said.
Last week, President Duterte said he would soon name the mayors and politicians involved in the illegal drug trade and who has links to drug lords.
The President, in a press briefing aired by state-run PTV 4, said some of these mayors are from Mindanao.
But Asis said while he became a shabu dependent, he had not ventured into selling drugs or protecting drug lords.
“I can assure you, 100 percent, I’m not into it and I’m confident that I would not be part of the 23 mayors whom President Duterte had hinted to be involved in illegal drugs,” he said.
Asis then offered to help those who are in need of drug rehabilitation. Monday’s mass surrender of drug dependents here was the largest in Agusan del Sur province.
Among those who yielded included a Grade 10 student, a person with disability and two elderly citizens, aged 67 and 80. Many of them cited peer influence as a reason why they got hooked into drugs.
Supt. Reynante Sibayton, city police director, admitted that only two small-time shabu pushers joined the mass surrender because big-time traders in the police’s watch list had left town ahead of the antidrug campaign that the police started as early as last year.
Sibayton said he expected more drug addicts to report to police and local officials in the coming days.
In Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental Gov. Yevgeny Emano said changes will be introduced to the management of the provincial jail following the seizure of 40 sachets of shabu there last week.
Emano said closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras would be installed within and around the compound of the Misamis Oriental provincial jail (MOPJ) in Cagayan de Oro. He said the CCTV system will boost efforts to monitor the movements of detainees and prison guards.
Following the discovery of the packets of shabu hidden in ceilings of detention cells, five MOPJ personnel, one of them a ranking official, had been identified to be in cahoots with inmates in bringing the illegal substance into the facility. Chris Panganiban and Jigger Jerusalem, Inquirer Mindanao
