“PANGARAP ko’y di maabot. Dahil sa bawal na gamot. Akin nang pinagsisihan ang aking kamalian.”
These regretful lyrics of “Bawal na Gamot,” a song about the perils of drug addiction, set the tone of a special project of the Pasig City police who on Saturday had their officers sing and jam with close to 600 confessed drug users who had surrendered in droves over the past few days.
Joined by members of the city’s antidrug abuse council and led by their chief, Senior Supt. Jose Hidalgo Jr., the lawmen gamely led the singing of “Bawal,” “May Bukas Pa,” and “Magbago Ka”—classic Filipino pop songs about hope and fresh starts—with hands raised and swinging as the lyrics flashed on a videoke screen.
“They (the policemen) sang with us like we’re friends. I realize we were almost the same, that we shared the same experience and they were also once addicted to something,” said Aldrin Rubio, 45, who joined the chorus with 570 other men at the Community Baptist Church in Pasig.
Rubio said he surrendered on Friday after being into drugs for almost 30 years. “After seeing what happened to my friends—some of them killed—I feared that I would share the same fate. I got scared of the police.”
Last Saturday, Rubio said he saw a different side of the policemen. “Now, I know I will surrender not because of fear, but because of love. I love my family, and I want to restore my broken relationship with my children,” he said.
The program started around 9 a.m. with a magic show, a lecture on illegal drugs and the criminal cases they will face if they use and sell drugs, the reason why they are hooked into illegal drugs, the effects of their vice on their family and the things they will do after their surrender.
Hidalgo said the Pasig City government is offering a total program with spiritual, social and financial intervention. It’s not just a one-time big-time event, he added.
Attending the program on Saturday, Pasig City Mayor Robert Eusebio told the drug dependents to make go0d their surrender and maximize the opportunity being given to them by the police, the government and God.
“Some people surrender because they feared of the headlines in the newspapers that they will die if they do not surrender. No. You are not surrendering to me. You are changing for yourself, your family. Do it for yourself,” the mayor told the audience, who had surrendered to the police for the past weeks.
“Wala sa Pasig ang pagawaan ng plastic. Kaya wag tayong plastic sa pagbabago natin (Plastics are not made here in Pasig. Let’s not be plastic (pretentious) in our surrender,” Eusebio said.
Eusebio added there is no special treatment for addicts as the city, through the Antidrug Abuse Council, has been offering rehabilitation and employment programs for drug dependents ever since.
But what became most appealing to the former drug dependents are the policemen and government employees sharing their own testimony of addiction.
Lecturers Inspector Roberto Garcia, chief of the Pasig City Police, and Dr Rally Abalon, now the national director of the Over Edge Philippines and a very active campaigner against illegal drugs, admitted to once being hooked into illegal drugs. “But we gave it up earlier,” Abalon said.
Digi Antonio, now the executive assistant to the Vice Mayor of Cainta, Rizal and a member of the Community Baptist Church, who led the worship on Saturday, said he knows how exactly illegal drugs destroy families.
“I’ve experienced how my father used to take illegal drugs and had pot sessions with his friends in his own room. And I witnessed how he died because of illegal drugs. And I am glad to witness how all of you wanted change and how you desired to get away from this destructive vice,” he said during the worship.
Like a Sunday worship service, the drug surrenderers were given the choice to accept Jesus as their sole savior and to surrender. Some listened intently. Others were in tears. Some felt strange experiencing and being called to this kind of ‘surrender.’
Joshua San Pedro, 24, told the Inquirer it was his first time to attend a Mass, specifically a worship service.
“I know Jesus but only from afar, from my neighbors, but I never felt him. But today, I know he is true. It felt strange,” San Pedro said, referring to the “play” performed by the church members on how Jesus saved a woman who was once an addict like him.
San Pedro, the youngest of six children, started using shabu when he was 22, when his mother died. His father was imprisoned also because of illegal drugs. “I never grew up with a father. Nobody advised me what to do. I did not have a clear direction. But now, all I want is to change. I don’t want to stay this way,” San Pedro said.
SPO4 Rogelio Baltazar, executive police officer of the Pasig City police and also an alumni and member of the church, volunteered to administer Saturday’s program. The church also gave free lunch and bibles after the event.
“Our goal really is to bring them closer to God,” Baltazar said, and show there are other options and means of livelihood.
The former drug addicts clapped and cheered when Zenaida Concepcion, head of the Pasig City’s Anti Drug Abuse Council, told them of the possibility of the government providing them with scholarship and/or capital for businesses should they complete the skills training at the Pasig City Livelihood Center and the rehabilitation program.
“Singing with the policemen projects the ideal image of the relationship of policemen and citizens, even violators. It may look shallow but it shows policemen, no matter how they are projected by media as bad, are still after the welfare of the people,” Baltazar said.
“They should not be feared. We are one in this together,” he added./rga
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