Drugs and the culture of death

How 25-year-old Christian “Lucky” Dalangin dumped all sense of right and wrong and killed his mother by slitting her throat twice with a knife in retaliation for her alleged nagging became clear when he confessed that he used shabu before committing the crime.

We can harp all we want about how—in contrast with the realities signified by the perpetrator’s name—un-Christian, unfortunate and seemingly beyond redemptive prayer the grisly affair was, but in our shock grief and rage, we know that Lucky did not commit the crime alone.

Lucky slew his mother Rubirose Tenchavez, 53, in Gochan Subdivision, barangay Mambaling, Cebu City, incidentally at a time when there has been a relative lull in the government’s fight against the scourge of illegal drug syndicates.

So while Lucky made an extra-judicial confession to the crime, his dastardly deed has to be seen in the context of the drug menace that continues to wreak havoc on Cebuanos in particular and Filipinos in general.

In a near-perfect world, the murder of Rubirose would move the consciences of Lucky’s drug dealer or pusher, people in his circle who became a “bad influence” on him and even drug lords behind the dealers to compunction of heart.

They would come out beating their breasts with matching mea culpas and submit themselves to the scales of justice. The double-dealing police authorities and anti-drug agents who are on the payroll of drug meisters would follow suit. One mother’s life lost to a rampaging drug addict’s son would be one too many.

But we don’t know across which drug dealer or lord’s doorstep we should figuratively lay Rubirose’s body now, or do we?

If members of the concerned government agencies aren’t there yet, will it take yet another casualty of domestic violence—not the drug user or addict, at that—to shake them out of their stupor in dragging drug rings to justice?

We hope not.

It’s evident from the grim death of Rubirose how illegal drug use reaps lives without warning, like a thief in the night. Shabu certainly made a monster of a young man who endured the rigors of nursing education so that with the relative pinch of being nagged, he took his own mother’s life.

If such a tragic gutting of family life cannot rouse law enforcement agencies to cleanse their ranks of drug syndicate protectors and be consistent in their campaign to forever banish drug syndicates from our land, we do not know what will.