Drug scourge about to go

The chances of being held up in a passenger jeepney, robbed in the streets or being victimized by akyat bahay (burglars) are less now than in times past.

Parents worry less now when their children stay out late than they did in previous years.

Ordinary citizens feel more secure in the first 100 days of the Duterte administration than in the same period in past

administrations.

That’s because people with criminal minds are in hiding, scared of being the next to die in President Duterte’s brutal crackdown on crime.

A total of 7.6 out of 10 Filipinos said they approved of President Digong’s unorthodox method of dealing with crime, according to a Social Weather Stations survey.

In short, 76 percent of the population don’t care about reports of extrajudicial killings of drug pushers and dealers.

They are the dregs of society, anyway, so why cry over their deaths?

Except for human rights advocates and Sen. Leila de Lima, most people don’t care whether those lowlifes were killed by the police, vigilantes or fellow

criminals.

It’s like the ordinary citizen saying, “Digong, I don’t care how you do it, as long as you get criminals off my back so I can live peacefully.”

Mano Digong’s 76 percent approval rating for the first three months of his presidency is the highest among his predecessors since Fidel Ramos.

Noynoy Aquino got the second highest with a 71-percent approval rating, followed by Ramos with 70, Erap Estrada with 69, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo with 42.

In other words, Mano Digong is the most liked among the leaders since Ramos in the first three months of their

presidency.

Mano Digong’s avid supporters hope the honeymoon with the citizenry lasts until

the end of his six-year term.

Drug peddlers and traffickers have caused misery to millions of people in this country.

Illicit drugs have driven people to commit the most despicable crimes, like fathers raping their own daughters or adult men killing toddlers after

raping them.

Drug addiction has spread in all strata of society, from the gated villages in Makati and Muntinlupa to the slums of Tondo, Manila.

Drug addiction is also widespread in the rural areas. It is so prevalent that many farmers have stopped raising chickens, pigs and goats for family consumption because neighborhood addicts steal them.

The popular narcotic of users or addicts is the crystal meth, popularly known as “shabu.”

Before the current campaign on illegal drugs, shabu was sold cheap in the streets.

From P1,200 per gram, the price of shabu has shot up to P25,000, the highest price since 2002, said Director General Isidro Lapeña of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.

But President Digong is not satisfied with just bringing up the cost of shabu at prohibitive levels.

He wants shabu completely eliminated in the streets because of the mass slaughter of traffickers and peddlers.

With the death toll of drug peddlers rising every day, it should not surprise us that the drug scourge will be gone for good.