Risa hits gov’t for belatedly recognizing drugs as ‘health’ issue

Senator Risa Hontiveros. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES

Senator Risa Hontiveros twitted the government on Thursday for belatedly recognizing that the country’s drug problem was a public health issue, saying a public health policy on drug abuse should have been implemented from the very start, instead of encouraging a “climate of killing” against illegal drugs.

The senator was reacting to Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella’s statement that the government, after claiming victory in its war on drugs, was now looking at the country’s drug problem “not only as a national security [threat] but also as a public health issue.”

“Hence, the building of [rehabilitation facilities] all over the nation,” Abella said at a news conference in Malacañang on Tuesday.

READ: Palace claims victory in war on drugs

But Hontiveros, chair of the Senate committee on heath, said the government could not just use an “add rehab center and stir approach in its belated attempt to add a health angle to its deadly war on drugs.”

“Our country did not need more than 6,000 people to die in order to see drug abuse as a public health issue. The government’s supposed shift to a public health approach in its anti-drugs campaign should have come first in a comprehensive response,” Hontiveros said in a statement.

“At this point, I am afraid that this is an attempt to appropriate the public health advocacy without stopping and exacting accountability for the extrajudicial killings. Malacañang is painting a picture of victory and is using the public health discourse to provide a humane face to its deadly war on drugs and evade accountability for the patent abuses,” she said.

“It would be mechanical and tokenistic. The government might think that by simply building a mega-drug rehabilitation center and putting all the drug addicts there, it has sufficiently addressed the health needs of the drug users. Yet, what the majority of the drug users actually need are not inpatient care but outpatient healthcare interventions,” she said.

The senator pointed out that only 9% of suspected drugs users who have surrendered under “Oplan Tokhang” were committed to rehabilitation facilities while the 91% who do not need institutionalized support went back to their communities.

The progress in modern drug rehabilitation and comprehensive out-patient healthcare programs, she said, guarantees that only those who are extremely addicted to illegal drugs were admitted to a drug rehabilitation facility.

“The government should have heeded our appeal at the outset and mobilized resources in the funding of out-patient rehabilitation programs and community drop-in centers, as well as harm reduction capacity-building sessions for local governments, health agencies and non-government organizations,” Hontiveros said.

“Now, much harm, which could have been prevented, has been inflicted on thousands of dead, drug dependents further cut off from health services and poor people deprived of public funds used for Tokhang instead of for social and economic programs.”

She said the best public health approach now appropriate to the situation is for the government to put an end to alleged extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the country.

“Ending the killings and holding all those responsible for these atrocities must be done alongside the implementation of a public health agenda on the anti-drugs campaign. Failure to do so will fuel further speculations that the government not only condones the EJKs, but sanctions them, to the detriment of the people’s health,” the senator said. CBB/rga